


Onus

by SinVraal



Series: Mass Effect: Kye Shepard's Story [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Gen, Post-Game, Romance, Sci-Fi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-16
Updated: 2009-03-11
Packaged: 2017-10-10 18:26:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/102739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinVraal/pseuds/SinVraal





	1. Nothing

  


  


_More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,_   
_By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good,_ _  
All causes shall give way: I am in blood_ _  
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,  
Returning were as tedious as go o'er:_

-Shakespeare, _Macbeth_

  


* * *

  


  


 

At that moment, Kaidan was hard pressed to imagine a happier place to be than back within the cramped mess hall of the _SSV Normandy_. Well, perhaps there were a _few_ other happier places to be, he amended wistfully, but all things considered, the narrow frigate felt far more like home than anything else had in the last few weeks.

The only thing clear in the wake of Saren's attack on the Citadel – or rather, attack on all sentient beings - was that nothing was very clear anymore.

For her part, Commander Shepard had no intention of waiting around for the disorganized Alliance brass to honor her crew for their hard-fought, and in some ways solitary, victory. Six days after the battle, an abrupt order went out for the whole crew to present itself at what turned out to be a small but lavishly appointed club in the undamaged section of the Presidium. With little preamble, Shepard swept in and, wearing her sly smile, opened the bar, simply ordering everyone to have a good time.

The days and weeks of tension finally came unraveled as the night descended quickly into unabashed revelry. As the drinks flowed, so did the tale-telling, and Kaidan couldn't help but think Ashley would have approved of being remembered in good stories and boisterous toasts as opposed to the stuffy and solemn uniformed ceremony that would undoubtedly soon occur.

Kaidan had been conservative about drinking, overly conscious of the giddy feeling that still bloomed in his chest whenever he looked at Shepard. He'd spent quite a while with Garrus and Tali, letting himself get ensnared in their technical conversation and casually curious as to what exactly dextro-amino acid-based biologies consumed to have fun.

As the evening had worn on, Kaidan could not quite succeed in overcoming the background malaise that haunted his mind. It was perhaps appropriate, if not entirely predictable, that Joker would be the one to bluntly call him out on it.

"You're overcompensating," Joker had drawled casually, his nearly full beer held near his lips as if it might attempt to escape if given a moment alone. "I have it on good authority that women like it when you talk to them."

"I'm not going to hang off her all night like a lost puppy," Kaidan retorted defensively. "I'm sure the rumor mill is busy enough as it is." He glanced across the room to where Shepard was recounting some story or other to a half-dozen _Normandy_ crewmen. Whether from alcohol or simply the company of trusted friends, her face was open and animated as she talked and laughed, a far cry from her usual cool reserve.

Joker smirked. "Are you seriously the only human ever born who gets _more_ uptight when you drink? Come on man, we just saved the world! Now beat it, you're cramping my reputation as a surly asshole."

Kaidan could never be entirely sure what drove Joker's little moments. Sometimes he worried the pilot was nursing resentment over Ashley's death, but most times he was sure the pilot simply considered Kaidan's predicament to be his own personal source of entertainment.

The lieutenant was still wrestling with how best to approach the moving target that was the appropriate boundary for interacting with Shepard in public when she all but pounced on him in the empty stairwell leading to the balconies.

"There a reason you're avoiding me?" she asked archly, cornering him in an alcove.

"Uh... not a good one," he said lamely. "I just-"

"If you're going to deprive me of your company for the party," she said, her voice a low purr as she leaned scandalously close to him, "you better not be thinking I'm going home alone tonight."

Goosebumps crawled up his arms. "I... wouldn't dream of it."

She lingered, close enough for him to feel the heat of her body and just long enough to nearly override his better judgment before she stepped away. "Good," she pronounced, favoring him with her sly smile as she turned and vanished back down the hall.

In the days afterward, he often found himself drifting back to the memory of those following hours. Not only for the time spent lost in the delirious fire, but just as much for the pure pleasure of not having to go anywhere the next morning. Seemingly by unspoken agreement, neither of them brought up anything of consequence, letting nothing spoil those precious hours, a brief oasis free of uncertainty.

For though Sovereign had not succeeded in its ultimate goal, Kaidan had to wonder if the turmoil left in its wake wouldn't have still pleased the synthetic destroyer-god.

The fleets that had once kept order in Citadel space had been badly mauled by the Reaper's devastating assault. Sensing opportunity, pirate activity spiked, causing the governments of the Citadel races to pull back their ships in defense of their own holdings, all the while expecting their neighbor to pick up the slack elsewhere.

While he couldn't speak for what must have been happening inside the workings of the other races' military structures, Kaidan felt sure it wasn't far from what the Alliance was going through. The wholesale destruction of several major ships left large holes in the command structure, opening up political power plays as different factions moved to fill the power vacuums left over from the deaths of several high-ranking officials.

Caught in the middle, the Citadel itself floundered. Undermanned, Citadel Security struggled to maintain order within the multi-racial populace of the massive city-state. Sovereign's devastating super-lasers had caused major damage to the infrastructure in some areas, and still more when parts of the mighty dreadnought had crashed into the station's inhabited Wards. On top of it all, the political upheaval disrupted the economy upon which the isolated space station relied for all of its resources.

Ten days after Sovereign's destruction, Kaidan had been abruptly assigned to lead a squad of marines into the Citadel's badly damaged Fourth Ward, where they spent two weeks camped out in the ruin of the C-Sec garrison assisting the local turian unit in restoring order and infrastructure. While they spoke little of it, Kaidan knew the turian unit was also tasked with guarding the retrieval of parts of Sovereign that had landed nearby.

Despite the lurch of sudden reassignment, Kaidan had been glad to be given something to do to help out that was nonetheless not too far from Shepard and the _Normandy_. Still, he lived those two weeks under a cloud of nagging fear that she would be called away from the Citadel without warning, and without him.

He missed her badly during those days. He even missed the rest of the _Normandy_ crew, not the least for simply being around people who knew the truth behind the Reaper attack. His assigned squad was a mix of kids from the _Moscow_ and two experienced NCOs that had escaped the destruction of the frigate _Narva_ and now waited permanent reassignment. Good soldiers caught in the same lurch of politics and loss as Kaidan, looking for something stable to rally around. Kaidan did his best to be that stability, but it wasn't as easy as it should have been.

Above all else, Kaidan loathed being unable to tell them the truth. He wished they wouldn't ask about the battle of the Citadel, but of course they did, because they were all eager to hear the stories from the guy who'd been at Spectre Shepard's right hand. Kaidan hated having to carefully maneuver through the minefield of classified information. He wanted to be straight with them, be one of them like he always had, but every time the words "I can't talk about that" came out of his mouth, they drifted a little further away, and it left him caught between the ax and the grindstone of camaraderie and duty.

Finally, the garrison had been left with power, the all-important network linkup and an influx of new C-Sec troops to reinforce it. Kaidan was granted a few days' leave, contingent that he didn't leave the Citadel.

Not that it really felt like leave. There seemed to be a hundred things to worry about, a flood of messages and calls from friends and family. Everyone was eager to talk, to fill the empty spaces abruptly left by thousands of casualties, and to celebrate the hard-won victory. Again, though, Kaidan was repeatedly brought up short by the earnest curiosity of those who wanted, and indeed deserved, to know the truth Shepard had dug up about Saren and the Reapers.

They bid farewell to Tali, as she left on her way back to the quarian fleet. In a moment of frustration, Shepard had hinted that the Citadel Council had argued about whether or not Tali should be released at all, given her knowledge. Shepard had privately ranted at length about the Council's dim view of the quarians and their potential contribution to combating the Reaper threat. It was an ugly moment, but ultimately clearer heads prevailed and Tali was formally thanked by the Council and allowed to return home.

Perhaps to avoid similar entanglements, Wrex had simply slipped off the station altogether in the week after Saren's attack. Though obviously somewhat disappointed, Shepard had simply shrugged and said she couldn't blame him, and as days passed, it seemed evident the pragmatic mercenary had probably chosen wisely.

Liara recovered quickly from the injuries she'd sustained, but shortly thereafter was summoned to Thalassia to meet with a council of matriarchs. Kaidan was sure she'd be back at some point, but the asari weren't known for their alacrity in making major decisions. The battered behemoth of the _Destiny Ascension_ still loomed near the Citadel, as much a message of reassurance to the station's populace as a warning that despite considerable damage, the dreadnought was still a force to be reckoned with.

In all of it, Kaidan was never really sure what he should do about Shepard, if anything. She was constantly in demand, so much so that it made his own long and painstaking debriefing seem quick and painless. He hovered on the periphery, trying at once to be there if needed but not wanting to get underfoot in the maelstrom.

And so it was with relief one morning, nearly a month after the destruction of Sovereign, that Kaidan flipped open his omni-tool and found a curt message ordering him to report to the _Normandy_ with his equipment.

Shepard, for her part, was obviously relieved to have left the Citadel. In the time he'd known her, Kaidan had learned to better read her moods, and though she still seemed tense, the perpetual frustration of Citadel politics seemed to have drained away. Despite the fact it was a little bit maddening to be forced to be professionally distant, Kaidan was still more than happy to be sitting a few feet away from her again, in a place where his role was clear.

Across from her, Garrus looked very smart in his crisp, blue C-Sec uniform. The Citadel's star-shaped insignia on his shoulder was surmounted by the turian insignia for Praetor. The rank more or less meant 'special investigator', which to Kaidan evoked imagery of the lone gumshoe out to clean up the mean streets, a vision he thought suited his turian friend. He faintly wished he'd been around to watch Executor Pallin award the rank - the taciturn head of C-Sec must have been chewing on his mandibles.

It was, apparently, at Garrus' behest that the _Normandy_ had left the Citadel. But Kaidan was having trouble getting anything else concrete out of either the turian or Shepard about what exactly they were doing in the Asgard system with a skeleton crew.

"Hopefully nothing," was Shepard's vague response to his inquiry about what they were looking for. "Garrus' intel is very loose... and the fleet is stretched so thin, no one is going to send a ship out on a rumor. But I trust his instincts, so here we are."

Kaidan was fairly sure Shepard had been at the point of taking any pretext offered to get away from the Citadel, and since he was included, he felt no desire to quibble.

Sitting to his right were the two marines Shepard had picked to fill out the ground team. Both were evidently still somewhat star-struck, and more than a little surprised that the legendary Commander Shepard deigned to sit in the same mess hall and drink her morning coffee with her teammates.

"It was a little short notice, but I borrowed them from a friend," Shepard had explained with a smirk. That friend, it turned out, was Rear Admiral Adam Tennyson, commander of the Fifth Fleet cruiser _Hyderabad_, which was undergoing extensive repairs. Kaidan's curiosity hit a dead end when he discovered a sizable portion of Tennyson's storied service record was classified, but the N designation next to his tag number spoke volumes.

Certainly the most vociferous of the two "borrowed" marines was Service Chief Alina Wickham, whose chin-length brown hair and long, expressive fingers danced around in time with her circuitous but emphatic argument, which currently had something to do with the nature of geth intelligence.

Corporal Suman Nayar obviously tried to do a better job of being casual, calmly facing into the verbal storm coming from the chief and valiantly trying to steer the conversation out of the stratosphere of esoteric AI theory and back to what had started it in the first place - the thorny question of sentience.

Unusually short for a marine, Nayar was young and solidly built, with an unlovely but practical face and a deep voice that lent him an air of gravitas beyond his years. Throughout the conversation, Nayar's gaze kept flicking across the table toward Garrus, but whether that was out of hostility or mere curiosity Kaidan couldn't tell.

"Come on, Wick, they're machines," Nayar was saying, cracking his knuckles absently. "How do you know that when one dies, the geth core doesn't just boot up a new one to replace it?"

"Haven't you been listening?" Wickham huffed irritably. "That's not how quantum computing works! They're all loaded with blue boxes, they're all individuals... as much as they can be within the distributed intelligence network. Look, it's like this-"

Nayar was saved from a new onslaught when the comm speaker clicked to life. "Bridge to Commander Shepard," Joker's voice spoke up. "You better come up and see this."

For a moment Shepard didn't move, eyeing the invisible speaker over the rim of her cup. "Ten more gray hairs," she muttered to no one in particular, then got up and headed for the stairs.

Garrus tapped his taloned fingers against the table, watching her go. The turian's blade-like mandibles flexed slightly. The subtleties of those movements were largely lost on Kaidan, but being around Garrus for some time had taught him that particular motion usually meant agitation of some kind.

"What's going on?" Wickham asked curiously.

Kaidan pushed the last of his food around his plate, his stomach suddenly tight. _Hopefully nothing._ "If it's important, we'll know soon enough," he said, standing up to return his tray to the cleaning system.

Joker's tone, crisply professional and devoid of his usual bantering drawl, had been enough to tell Kaidan the pilot was alerted to something worrisome. His suspicion was confirmed a scant few minutes later when booted footsteps rang out on the stairs, coming at a quick pace.

"Suit up!" Shepard announced, rounding the bulkhead at a brisk trot and heading for the lockers on the near end of the crew area.

Wickham and Nayar glanced at each other, wide-eyed. "We're..." the chief stammered, "uh, who, Ma'am?"

"Everyone!" the commander barked without stopping. "We're dropping in five, move it!"

The two marines lurched to their feet and scurried after Garrus, who was already heading for the elevator. Kaidan hesitated only briefly before following, flush with the sudden thrill and trepidation that always preceded a mission.

As the cargo elevator doors hissed shut, Kaidan watched those same emotions flicker across the faces of the two new marines, and was reminded of a day that felt like an eternity ago, the first day he'd jumped out of the belly of the _Normandy_ beside Commander Shepard.

_Nothing. Sure._

  



	2. Through

"He's dead, Commander," Garrus said, standing from where he crouched next to the still form lying in the dust. "Multiple blows to the face... enough to crack the visor plate... but nothing more. Decompression did the rest."

"Miserable way to die..." Nayar commented quietly, his head cocked as he looked down at the hardsuited body. Blood painted the inside of the suit's visor, hiding the occupant's face.

Wickham fidgeted and looked away, down the sloping terrain of the asteroid onto which they had dropped so abruptly. Garrus followed her gaze past the one-room prefab outpost festooned with broadcast antennas and down into the small valley. There, the team's next objective jutted into the sky; a towering cylinder belching a constant stream of incandescent plasma into the midnight sky. In the airless environment, the fusion torch was eerily silent, its titanic might felt only as a powerful subsonic rumble transmitted up through his armor from the rocky floor.

A few kilometers behind them, the first of the three torches was now cold. Shepard's team had found the bunker-like base station empty but for a few human corpses and one surviving engineer. The terrified man had surprised the team on its way out of the bunker, but hadn't been able to identify the attackers.

Garrus turned the facts over in his head, trying to see the bigger picture that continued to elude him. The dead engineer at his feet hinted at the killer's particular cruelty. Where a single shot would have sufficed to end the man's life, the killer had opted instead to allow the man to suffer decompression, an agonizing end in the airless silence of the asteroid's surface.

"We're on a timer here," Shepard said crisply. "Keep moving."

The tension among the team was palpable as they maneuvered down the rocky slope, the low gravity allowing them to tread with unnatural lightness. Garrus privately hated low-gee environments- they made maneuvering difficult, as any quick move could send you flying, unable to change your course until you hit a solid surface again. Training had taught him to appreciate surfaces to which he could mag-lock his boots, but the rocky ground offered no such consideration.

All during the trip to the Asgard system, Garrus had tried to resist the urge to go over his data again and again. There wouldn't be anything new in those scant pages, and it wouldn't help quell the fear that there _was_ something he'd missed, some obvious, glaring thing, replete with humiliation for dragging the busy Spectre away from the Citadel for a few suspicious lines of code.

Trudging across the desolate asteroid created a conflict in and of itself. On the one hand, there was the vindication of his instinct, beyond even what he could have imagined. But on the other was the feeling he didn't _want_ to be right anymore. A little embarrassment would have been something he could live with if it meant there wasn't, in fact, an ecosystem-obliterating hunk of rock and ore bearing down on Terra Nova; a colony of over four million humans.

The question of _who_ would do such a thing burned at the edges of Garrus' mind as the team approached the door of the second torch bunker, flanking and scanning as they went. Citadel conventions specifically prohibited the use of Tier I kinetic impacters, but it made no sense that this would be the work of a major military, anyway. Garrus couldn't help but wonder if the ghost of Saren wasn't reaching out from beyond the grave to hurl his hatred against the humans one last time.

Saren could be cruel when it had suited him, but the geth weren't- they would have simply shot the fleeing human. Garrus sometimes wondered if the geth had any concept of suffering or pain in the way organics did. Sometimes, when they died, they seemed to cry out, a digitized gurgle that buzzed and cracked as their white conductive blood spurted out of them. But to Garrus, it only ever sounded like a speaker shorting out.

Who, then, was trying to destroy the colony? The data gathered at the Citadel was fragmented hints, and Garrus had yet to determine if it had originated at the Citadel, or was only passing through one of the countless communication hubs that serviced all of Citadel space.

Garrus glanced behind them as they approached the bunker door, but saw only empty rock and star-filled sky. Still disquieted, he turned back to see Shepard key in a code sequence provided by the surviving engineer, and the heavy, toothed portal cycled open.

Inside the airlock, pressure and air reasserted itself with a soft hiss. Garrus shifted his weight, glad to feel the leverage of proper gravity return. The inner door to the airlock cycled open, and the humans' visors opened in response to the clean atmosphere as Shepard slipped into the entry hall. The walls were reinforced concrete, sealed and buttressed with thick beams at intervals. Like the first bunker, the outer section consisted of material storage, with a haphazard collection of heavy-duty crates pushed up against the walls. The commander bypassed them without a glance, approaching the inner door that led to the machine room.

"Sigs," Wickham said quietly from right behind him. The gentle glow of her omni-tool cast a ruddy light along the concrete wall.

"Count?" Shepard asked.

"Five within fifty meters," the chief answered.

"Load it up, but hold your fire until we confirm hostiles." Shepard gestured to the far side of the doorway. Nayar quickly took up position, gripping his assault rifle in front of him.

In Garrus' HUD, ghosted markers appeared as Wickham plugged the locations of the armor signatures into the team's network. The power output of military-grade kinetic shielding systems were hard to conceal at close range, and Shepard's tone confirmed her skepticism that they were merely engineers.

Shepard touched the door panel and the portal slid open. Beyond, transformers and other monolithic machinery rumbled away, interlinked with pipes and cabling that ran along the ceiling. These powered the massive magnetic containment field and regulated the fuel that governed the fusion reaction inside the torch.

Garrus followed the commander as quietly as he could as they advanced into the room. In other circumstances, he might have suggested they power down their own shields in the interest of stealth, but it was a gamble. Shield capacitors did not recharge instantly, and Shepard obviously did not think it worth the risk, preferring instead to hope the enemy was not running constant scans, and be better protected in case of surprise.

Shepard abruptly held up a closed fist. Now well-versed in human military hand-signs, Garrus froze along with the others. Over the sound of machinery, Garrus could hear voices. The commander waited a few seconds, then edged forward along the broad pipes.

"Vakarian, Wickham, flank," Shepard murmured, gesturing left along the far wall.

Garrus responded with a curt nod and turned away, creeping along the wall in the shadow of a huge, humming transformer unit. As he went, he tuned his audio pickups to drop lower frequencies, trying to zero in on the voices.

"... just have some damn patience, Kath."

Something in the tone of voice, the accent, pricked at Garrus' memory.

"Patience? Hah!" a second voice sneered. "We should have left the instant Balak started up with his revolutionary nonsense. Not a lot of good merchandise to be had on an _asteroid_, is there?"

"I don't like it any more than you do," the first voice replied. "But reneging on contracts is bad for business."

"Maybe if Balak just stopped _shooting_ everyone, this wouldn't be such a waste of time," a third voice interjected. The slight modulation told Garrus it was being transmitted through a helmet speaker.

"These are lousy takes anyway." There was a heavy thud somewhere ahead.

The armor signatures were getting close. Garrus held out a hand, and Wickham stopped obediently, giving him space to edge up to the corner of a support piling. He peeked quickly around, taking in the scene before retreating, lest the glint of light off of his visor give him away.

Standing in the center of the space beyond was a loose cluster of humanoids, all armed and armored in a motley assortment of gear. Three wore bulbous helmets, but the two talking were bareheaded. Garrus recognized the four-eyed aliens immediately.

"I see them, Commander," Garrus reported softly. "Five batarians, next to the main transformer stack."

He heard Shepard growl wordlessly over the comms. Beside him, Wickham craned her neck to peek around the corner.

"Geez, they're even uglier in person," she whispered, pushing an ECM grenade into the rail launcher on her pistol.

The sound of something scraping against concrete was all the warning they got as a low-slung, quadrupedal form barreled out of a dark corner beside them and launched itself at Wickham with an ugly roar. The chief only managed a startled yell before the beast crashed into her, sending them both to the floor, her gun spinning away.

Varren. Long and lean, the alien creature's scaly hide glittered dull silver in the dim light. Garrus had plenty of experience with the vicious pests, and knew firsthand how dangerous they were, the very reason they were often kept as pets by enterprising thugs. Illegal on the Citadel, they were nonetheless nearly impossible to eliminate even in the barren ecosystem of the massive station.

"Intruders!" one of the batarians yelled.

Garrus cursed. The varren's long jaws were clamped around Wickham's forearm, making it too risky to fire on it. He lunged toward the stricken marine and swung the butt of his rifle at the varren's head, but the alien beast twisted violently and the blow skipped off the hard scales of its neck. Wickham yelled in pain as her arm was wrenched.

Suddenly Garrus' shield hissed and the dull impact of decelerated gunfire slammed into his armored back. He whirled around, spraying a wild burst of rifle rounds back at his attackers. He was completely exposed, with the five batarians advancing fast. In that sickening instant, he faced a choice- stay and die, or retreat to cover but leave Wickham to her fate.

The second his wild shots had bought him expired quickly as the batarians returned fire en masse. Garrus dropped into a roll as sparks exploded off the heavy machinery around him. His outstretched left hand closed around Wickham's pistol, and, flat on the ground, he twisted and fired the loaded ECM grenade in one quick movement.

The batarians were experienced fighters, and knew they had the advantage. The two closest to Garrus' wild grenade launch dodged behind cover as it exploded, spreading crackling blue lighting across the layered conduits. The lead alien confidently shrugged off the coruscating energy and waved two of his companions forward as he raised his rifle. Bringing his own rifle to bear, Garrus' breath hissed between his teeth as he got ready to die.

An abrupt explosion saved him. A wave of shrapnel knifed into the batarians from behind, followed swiftly by a bloom of dark energy that washed through the confined space, smashing the aliens into the machines and sending them sprawling. Garrus pushed himself to his feet just as Alenko rounded the corner ahead of him, firing at the disorganized batarians. Behind the lieutenant, the rhythmic boom of Shepard's shotgun wove through the batarian's dying shouts.

Alenko skidded to a stop beside Garrus, his feet planted wide. He gestured sharply, and the blue corona of dark energy enveloped him. Both the varren and Wickham lifted into the air. Garrus quickly realized the lieutenant's intent- the varren's legs scrabbled and clawed at the empty air, suddenly robbed of leverage.

Her eyes wide with terror, Wickham nonetheless responded to the sudden opportunity. Exploiting the only piece of leverage between them- the varren's grip on her own arm, she swung her right fist hard at the beast's eye. The varren's jaws opened reflexively as it let out a roar of pain and wrenched its head back.

Alenko jumped forward and hooked his arm around Wickham's waist, dragging her out of the blue distortion in the air and away from the floating varren. Garrus quickly snapped up his rifle and fired, ending the unshielded beast's life in a spray of orange blood.

The fiery blue energy around Alenko subsided as he helped the chief regain her balance. Though he had seen it now many times, Garrus was always a little awestruck by his friends' command of the mysterious energies that underpinned the universe. Neither Alenko nor Shepard ever spoke of their abilities in anything other than practical terms, but among turians, biotics were kept apart in specialized, secretive cabals, so Garrus had never completely shaken the sense of wonder his culture had impressed on him.

Garrus looked around, rifle ready, looking for signs of opposition. Instead, the commander herself crossed the hallway at a brisk trot, Nayar on her heels as they threaded their way between the armored batarian bodies now spread haphazardly along the floor. Shepard took in the team's situation with a quick glance.

"Keep together until we confirm clear," she ordered crisply. "Vakarian, cover the rear." Turning on her heel, she advanced quickly down toward the control bay, the corporal shadowing her closely.

Garrus stood aside to allow Alenko and Wickham past, noting the chief's pallid face with concern as she leaned on the lieutenant. Mercifully, there were no other attacks as they emerged out of the machine room to the entrance of the control bay. Garrus popped open his omni-tool interface and ran a scan for hardsuit signatures.

"Anything?" the commander asked, spotting the orange glow.

"We seem to be clear, Commander," Garrus said, shutting down the tool.

"Okay. Get Wickham patched up; Nayar and I will shut this thing down," she answered. "Vakarian, stay here and keep your eyes peeled for varren."

"Yes Commander," Garrus said with a nod.

The commander tapped her long-range comms as she turned to go. Garrus heard her instruct Joker to patch her through to the surviving human engineer as she and the corporal stepped through the heavy doors leading to the torch's main control bay.

He turned back to the others to see Alenko indicating a jutting retainer at the base of a concrete piling to Wickham, who gingerly sat down, cradling her left forearm.

Ever curious, Garrus watched as the lieutenant ran his fingers over the chief's damaged arm, carefully examining the scratched and damaged armor plates. Wickham bared her teeth, her breath hissing in pain, but stubbornly refusing to cry out.

"Something's broken, I think. What class mexo are you running?" Alenko asked, using the marines' common contraction for the more cumbersome 'medical exoskeleton'.

"Um... S- Sirta SMI..."

"Good," the lieutenant said conversationally. "Aldrin's compatibility interface drives me insane."

Wickham chuckled weakly. "I thought it was just me..."

Alenko smiled and shook his head. "I don't like a mexo trying to tell me how to do my job, thank you very much." He reached into is medical kit and withdrew a small, clear vial. He eased Wickham sideways and reached around to fiddle with the thin compartments along the armor's power plant.

"What's that?" Wickham asked.

"Nexadrine, not standard issue. It's powerful, better at targeting localized pain, and it won't adversely affect your reaction times." The lieutenant tapped a few commands into his omni-tool, and Wickham's tool blipped in response.

"Why isn't it standard issue?" Garrus inquired curiously.

"Because it's narcotic. _Not_ after a single dose," Alenko said quickly, seeing Wickham's worried expression. "But they're not going to go putting it in everyone's default delivery system."

Wickham smirked. "I guess not, huh?"

"I know my way around painkillers," Alenko said in a strangely guarded tone. He pulled out a cylinder of dark blue shiny cloth and unrolled it into a sleeve. "Normally I wouldn't resort to Nex, but this isn't a situation where we can afford to slow down."

"I won't slow anyone down," Wickham said, squaring her shoulders as Alenko slipped the sleeve over her left forearm. "This is going to hurt, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Okay... do it."

The lieutenant tapped a command, and the sleeve suddenly contracted around Wickham's arm, changing color as the nano-fibers hardened and forced the limb into alignment. The chief's body stiffened, and she swore virulently between her teeth. Garrus winced in sympathy.

"Sorry," she mumbled sheepishly, breathing hard.

Alenko smiled reassuringly as he checked the sleeve. "You did fine. I've seen guys twice your size bitch and moan a lot worse than _that_. At least you didn't try to punch my lights out."

Wickham snickered, then her face fell. "I... It's all my fault. It was stupid, I was just watching armor sigs. Didn't even occur to me they'd have friggin' guard dogs..."

"We're running with zero intel here," Garrus offered. "Surprises can't be helped."

Among turians, dealing with injuries was usually a silent affair. Soldiers were taught different ways to manage pain, but it was always treated stoically. Something in the human temperament seemed to respond to the conversational tone, however, because already the color was coming back to Wickham's face.

"Nayar makes fun of me because I have my face in a terminal all the time," the chief continued morosely, "and this time it really did bite me in the ass. I'm never going to hear the end of it."

A shudder ran through the floor, then the omni-present vibration stilled as the torch's carefully controlled fusion reaction burnt itself out. Garrus looked around to see Shepard and Nayar emerge from the back room, both wearing expressions that radiated cold fury. The commander's face in particular made Garrus reflexively grip his assault rifle tighter.

"There's more of them in the main control complex next to the last torch," Shepard announced in a clipped voice. "Chief?"

"Good to go, ma'am," Wickham answered, drawing herself up.

Shepard swept a quick gaze over the marine, noting the stabilizing sleeve. "We can't retreat. Stay smart and don't take chances."

"Aye aye."

"Did the batarians contact you, Commander?" Alenko asked.

"No, one of the engineers did," Shepard said as she swept past them toward the exit. "Now let's move before the batarians amuse themselves by shooting anyone _else_."

The chill in the air was palpable as Garrus fell in behind the rest of the team. Shepard was right- there was no way out of this but through.


	3. Rubicon

Kaidan only half listened to Balak's rant as the batarian leader, flanked by two of his men, poured his invective down onto Commander Shepard from the raised dais in the middle of the room.

He scanned the wide open area, picking out the dozen or more combat drones hovering near the freight elevator. The central plaza connected three floors of rooms, intended as administration and living quarters for the eventual mining crew that would inhabit Asteroid X57 once it was pushed into its intended orbit around Terra Nova. The space was large, but still bore an unfinished quality, as only a small number of engineers had been stationed there to guide the asteroid on its course.

That was, until the batarians had arrived, killing some of the engineers and taking the others hostage. The alien leader, stark in his blood-red armor and pistol in hand, was pacing back and forth as he roared his accusations at the human race as a whole.

From where Kaidan stood at the top of the stairs behind Shepard, he made sure not to glance in the direction of Garrus, who, unseen, had crept away along the inside of the concrete retaining wall. The commander, meanwhile, answered the batarian leader in clipped tones, simply letting the alien whip himself into a rage.

Garrus' voice finally came softly over the comms. "In position."

"Drop them," Shepard ordered abruptly, and a chill crawled up Kaidan's back at her tone.

Balak's diatribe was cut short as a burst of gunfire lit up his shields. A sniper rifle cracked, narrowly missing the batarian leader but hitting one of his companions in the shoulder, spinning him down to the ground. Balak staggered out of the way, shoving his second toward the cover of the loading gantry.

Above them, the floating drones suddenly snapped into motion. Kaidan dodged behind the railing as the air filled with the shrill chatter of high-velocity rounds hitting metal. To his right, Nayar dropped into a low crouch and shimmied along the railing towards the better cover afforded by the open doorway close by.

The sniper rifle cracked again, and the wounded batarian, crawling desperately after his leader, crumpled into a heap. But wherever Balak thought he might be escaping to, only death found him.

Shepard vaulted up the stairs and crashed into Balak's second, spinning the batarian around before shoving him contemptuously aside. Backpedaling frantically, Balak managed a few wild shots in the commander's direction before being slammed off his feet by a monstrous storm of dark energy. Flaming blue, Shepard snatched her shotgun off her back and bore down on the writhing batarian terrorist, firing a steady stream of rounds into him as he thrashed and flailed.

Behind Shepard, the second staggered to his feet, pawing for his gun. Kaidan bit off a shout of warning as he spotted the flash of pinpoint lights between the batarian's shoulders. The unfortunate alien must have heard the telltale whine of the grenade priming, because he froze, then made a desperate grab behind his back. An instant later, a violent concussion tore the batarian's torso into flying gore and twisted ceramic composite, his head sailing almost majestically across the room to bounce off the far wall.

"Lieutenant!" Nayar shouted from his doorway. "There's a bomb in here!"

Kaidan gritted his teeth as he rammed a primed ECM grenade into his pistol and rolled to his feet, picking out a group of three drones and firing it at them. He dodged quickly behind a support column and then ran toward Nayar's doorway, his shields hissing from scattered impacts.

The bomb rested in the middle of the dimly-lit room, an ominous four-foot cylinder framed with metal bracing struts.

"Get out of here!" Kaidan barked at the corporal, waving him away. He couldn't read the batarian numerals flickering in the display, but it was obvious they were counting down. He dropped to his knees in front of it and popped up his omni tool, sweeping the device close to the bomb's casing. Under his armor, cold sweat prickled his skin. The tool beeped, informing him that the bomb was transmitting a network signal, routed to three others exactly like it.

"Commander!" he called out. "They set off timed charges! I've got one here, but there's three more scattered in the building!"

"Locations!" she answered instantly.

Kaidan quickly uploaded the approximate locations into the team's network. "Look for red cylinders, they should be broadcasting a weak signal on this band!"

"I'm closest to number two," Garrus said.

"On one!" Wickham chimed in.

"I'll get to three! Go!" the commander ordered.

Kaidan ran his fingers down the side of the outer casing until his omni-tool beeped. In response, a small panel swiveled smoothly open. He quickly scanned the readouts from his tool, recognizing the overall layout of the bomb. Simple but rugged and effectively destructive, they didn't appear to have any kind of failsafe- the batarians weren't expecting interference.

Kaidan set his teeth and stabbed the small, balefully glowing square inset under the panel. To his relief, it instantly turned green. The numerals on the top of the cylinder stopped.

"They're B460-type demo charges!" he said over the comms, jumping to his feet. "Side panel, red button!"

Kaidan ran back to the doorway and peered through. Down to his right, Nayar was firing at the drones from the cover of a column. As the lieutenant watched, a drone's a-grav lift failed and it tumbled out of the air.  
_  
_"This one's down!" Wickham called out.

Kaidan pulled out his pistol and fired at one of the remaining drones, while he palmed another ECM grenade with his other hand. Not unlike the geth, the drones did better in numbers. Without a controller, every loss from their networked cloud made the remaining ones correspondingly less effective.

"Two down!" Garrus announced.

A heartbeat later, the ground under Kaidan's feet convulsed with a sharp explosion. He lurched sideways and grabbed for the railing as dust rained down from the ceiling. Though it didn't come over the comms, over the rumble of cracking concrete he heard the wordless bellow of rage from inside the outer offices.

As the building stopped shuddering, Kaidan took off at a dead run toward the sound. All around him, the concrete walls showed a spiderweb of cracks, but the metal bracing held firm. The single charge wasn't enough to bring down the whole complex. The lights flickered, and suddenly amber emergency lighting bloomed throughout the building. An alarm klaxon blared.

Lungs burning, Kaidan dodged inside the hallway toward the staircase and took the stairs two at a time. He rounded a corner at the top to find Shepard standing in front of a dark doorway, her hands up on either side of the opening, shoulders heaving. The automatic portal had seized up halfway closed, distorted in its frame. The lights flickered and sparked, throwing lurid shadows through the drifting smoke.

She'd been too far away. Kaidan's blood froze with horror as he realized where the remaining engineers must have been.

"You... they..." he stammered, stumbling to a halt, his mind racing. "What... What the hell were you thinking? They had hostages!" The words burst out of Kaidan before he could stop them. "Killing batarians won't bring your parents back! You-" He stopped dead as Shepard's head snapped around to face him.

For an interminable second, her face was a mask of such raw, naked hurt that his throat constricted. Then the gates slammed shut, her expression hardening to stone as she whirled around and stalked past him out the door. Kaidan stood in stunned paralysis, fighting to breathe as the sickly smoke eddied around him.

The comms clicked. "Commander...," Joker sounded hesitant.

"What is it?" she answered in a tight voice.

"The asymmetry of the torches is causing an axial rotation on the asteroid... its course is tightening. Toward Terra Nova."

Kaidan sucked his breath in through his teeth, groping for an outcropping of shattered concrete to steady his suddenly weak knees. This new input seemed to skip off the edges of his mind, refusing to process.

"But we're shutting them down!" Wickham's shout cracked across the comm channel. "What the hell?"

"It's... it's too late," Joker said. "The rotation pushed it off course."

"Options?" Shepard said tersely.

"Uh, I don't have enough firepower on board to make a dent in that thing, Commander," Joker said. "No big ships in-system."

Woodenly, Kaidan made himself turn around and walk out after Shepard. He rounded a corner to see her leaning heavily against the railing of the walkway overlooking the plaza. The very sight of her caused him to stumble to a stop, still numb with shock.

The few seconds of terrible silence stretched out, then Nayar's voice clicked into the comms. "What if we blow one of the torches?"

Kaidan could almost hear the sudden grin in Joker's voice. "Like, boom, big nuke? Hmm..."

"Fusion burns are precisely controlled reactions," Wickham interjected. "You can't just light a match and expect-"

"Chief, be quiet!" Shepard snapped, her body straightening. "Joker, would it be enough to achieve deflection?"

"Stand by, gotta run some numbers."

"Do it," the commander said, turning suddenly and heading away along the curving railing. "Now, how do we blow a torch?"

"Well, the chief is right," Garrus said carefully. "This isn't a fission reaction. We can destroy the magnetic containment, but the failsafe will shut down the fuel feed and it'll just burn out."

"Systems can be overridden," Nayar pointed out.

"It'll be an analog failsafe, not something we can hack...," Wickham said doubtfully. "With redundant backups."

"Well," Joker crowed, "didn't that guy you found in the first bunker call himself lead engineer? I think I'll have a quick chat with him..."

The warning klaxon blared again. "Structural breach," a smooth, computerized voice echoed through the plaza. "All personnel, Emergency Life Support Apparatus protocol is now in effect. Repeat-"

"Looks like we're losing atmosphere," the chief said.

"Seal up," Shepard ordered. "Vakarian, Wickham, go get the number two bomb and bring it down to the service tunnel. Everyone regroup there." She set off toward the plaza at a brisk trot even as she spoke.

Kaidan trailed along behind her on heavy feet. At the base of the stairs, Nayar fell into step beside him.

"Sir? The, uh, civilians?" the corporal asked. His tone suggested he already knew the answer.

Kaidan shook his head, clenching his jaw. He absently cycled his visor shut. _Hostages. You don't... you _don't _risk hostages!_

Nayar gripped his assault rifle. "Shit. Goddamn alien slime..."

Kaidan glanced at the young marine, who was closing his own visor, his eyes bright with furious intent. The two of them rounded the cargo elevator shaft to see Garrus and Wickham setting one of the cylindrical bombs down on the ground. Shepard bent to examine the device as Garrus pointed out the relevant buttons. Dark batarian blood oozed and dripped onto the floor, leaking from Balak's mangled corpse sprawled on the edge of the central dais.

"Commander, it might actually work," Joker said excitedly, abruptly coming back on the comms.

"I don't like maybes, Joker!" she answered.

"Sorry, Ma'am, it's the best I can do. The axial rotation will bring the adjacent torch into the ideal position in under five minutes. I'm downloading the relevant instructions to you now."

"How nice of the batarians to leave us some ordinance," Shepard said absently as she reached down and grasped the cylindrical bomb's containment bar and hefted it bodily, staggering slightly under the weight. Nayar stepped up behind her and helped shoulder the bomb.

"All right, all of you, get to the Mako," she said firmly, pulling away from the corporal. "Minimum safe distance."

Kaidan clearly heard the undercurrent of weariness in Shepard's voice. His stomach writhed, his mouth opened reflexively, but he couldn't find the breath to speak. Across from him, Garrus rocked uncertainly on the balls of his feet, his faceless helmet showing nothing else.

Nayar spread his hands. "But-"

"This is not up for discussion!" Shepard snapped. "Move out!" Without another word, she turned on her heel and doggedly walked toward the service tunnel that led to the torch control bunker, tottering under the heavy load.

Feeling like he'd been punched in the stomach, Kaidan could do nothing but turn and make for the exit, his feet moving of their own accord. The team was silent as they made their way quickly through the complex. Just as they exited the airlock, a symbol popped up in Kaidan's private comm channel.

"Boy, the martyr is turned up to eleven today, isn't it?" Joker drawled indolently.

"Shut! Up!" Kaidan grated between his teeth, finally finding his voice. Impotent rage climbed up his throat as he marched stiffly toward the Mako. His hands twitched with the desire to twist the pilot's scrawny neck.

"Oh, don't get your armor in a bunch," Joker continued blithely. "I've been chatting with your friendly engineer, Simon, is it Anyway, we're looking at causing a backdraft into the fuel supply, which is stored underground away from the bunker. The place is built to take some serious punishment."

Kaidan couldn't decide who between them the pilot was trying to reassure. "That does _not_ fill me with confidence," Kaidan growled, smacking the opening pad on the Mako door hard enough to send a jolt of pain up his arm. "Call it bad past experiences with nukes!"

"Hey, asshole! You think I'd forgotten that?" Joker shot back angrily.

The comm channel snapped off, leaving Kaidan alone in his sealed helmet as he threw himself into the driver's seat and began quickly punching buttons. The tank's engines whined to life as the door shut behind the last of the team.

"This... this is stupid," Wickham said in a querulous voice, cycling her visor open as she buckled herself into her seat. "One of us should have gone with her. All of us! What if something goes wrong? We'll be too far away to be of any use."

"I don't like it either, but we're obeying orders!" Kaidan snapped into the team channel. _Yeah,_ _what a good little soldier you are._ He gunned the engine and the Mako lurched into motion, kicking up a plume of dust and rocks. _Just run off to die, is that it? Is that it? Godammit, no... Not like this..._

Plotting a course down the smooth side of a rocky hill, Kaidan took a deep breath, then flicked the command for Joker's private channel. "Look, just make sure she comes back, okay?" he said, straining to keep his voice steady.

"Uh, duh!" was the curt answer before the channel closed again.

The lifeless gray asteroid rolled by under them. Kaidan tried to force himself to concentrate on driving, even though every meter that opened up between him and the bunker behind seemed to strip a layer off his heart. The lone plea to Joker felt utterly pathetic.

"What the hell _is_ minimum safe distance here, anyway?" Nayar asked after a minute.

"I'm not exactly rolling in data on fusion torch explosions," the chief said testily.

"Over the horizon should be-"

The turian's comment was cut off when the Mako suddenly slammed into its shocks and then rebounded hard, the light gravity sending them sailing awkwardly into the air.

"Hold on!" Kaidan barked as he felt the tank lose its level trajectory. An instant later the nose crashed into the rocky ground, sending the Mako into a shuddering pirouette. He wrenched the steering around hard as three of the six broad tires hit the ground, slewing the Mako around into the spin. The tank gave a jolt as Kaidan locked the brakes, then finally skidded to a halt. Nayar swore between his teeth as the Mako rocked on its shocks.

"Argh... my arm," Wickham complained. Then her voice dropped. "Oh crap."

Kaidan blinked and focused on his HUD. The betraying, nightmarish little transponder indicator next to Shepard's name was dark.

Joker's voice crackled into the comm channel. "Everyone all right down there?"

"Joker, where's..." Kaidan breathed.

"Bunker's intact, but there's a ton of interference," the pilot said hastily. "Radiation and debris. Stand by..."

"Some warning might have been nice," Wickham grumbled.

"You and me both, Chief," Joker responded. "But Commander Shepard doesn't like to piss around."

"I noticed."

Kaidan scanned the starry sky, picking out the distant, tiny wedge of the ship rim-lit by the light of Asgard, Terra Nova's sun. With the Mako over the horizon of the asteroid, they relied on signal bounce from the _Normandy_ to get comms and transponder images. Toward where the main plaza lay, rocks and dust filled the airless sky, drifting and spinning in the light gravity.

The air inside the tiny cabin throbbed with tense, breathless silence. Seconds dragged, then the comms suddenly buzzed with static.

"Commander?" Joker asked. "Say again?"

The comm crackled again before resolving itself into a weary voice. "I said 'ow', dammit."

In Kaidan's HUD, Shepard's suit transponder flicked back on, green. Behind him, Wickham let out a whoop of relief.

Kaidan startled when Garrus reached across and briefly gripped his forearm. The unexpected act of solidarity snapped Kaidan out of his trance. He unclenched his death grip on the Mako's control columns and forced himself to inhale, leaning back in his seat.

The pilot chuckled. "Had a fun ride in there, Commander? Hey, you picked up some rads. Going to have to cozy up to the decom chamber for a few minutes."

"Joker, just tell me if it worked or not."

"It better have, because it was one hell of a show from up here," he answered brightly. "VI's working on new course projection now- Hey! Where d'you think _you're_ going?"

"What's going on?" Shepard demanded.

"Just a sec!" The comms clicked off.

"He's got some balls, talking to his CO that way," Nayar said dryly.

"He earned the benefit of the doubt," Garrus answered.

A flare of light bloomed over the horizon of the asteroid as Terra Nova itself crested the rocky hills, looming a dark basaltic blue through the floating debris as it tracked slowly upward. Kaidan dropped his gaze to the dashboard, searching for something to distract himself. Robotically, he reached out to the steering columns and eased the Mako into motion, turning back the way they had come.

A slow minute dragged by before the long-range comm channel clicked back on. "D'you want the bad news, the good news, or the great news?" Joker asked.

"Just please tell me the damn colony is safe," the commander said wearily.

"They'll get a nice meteor shower, but yeah, the asteroid was deflected," Joker crowed happily.

Murmurs of relief went around the cabin. Kaidan heard Shepard breathe deeply.

"As a special one-time bonus," the pilot continued, "I just crippled a batarian scout frigate that was trying to sneak around behind us."

"And the bad news...?" Shepard asked.

"There were two, but the other ship got away. I winged him, but the little weasel rabbited to FTL."

There was a moment of silence. "Well... a bird in the hand, right?" Shepard said finally. "Lieutenant, come pick me up. We're going to pay them a visit."

"... On our way," Kaidan managed.

"Sweet," the corporal murmured in a predatory tone. "Time for some payback."

"We're not out for revenge, Nayar," Wickham said pointedly.

"Oh, give me a break, Wick," the corporal answered irritably. "They murdered a bunch of civilians and tried to vaporize a whole colony!"

Kaidan stopped listening as the two marines continued to bicker, if only to suppress the urge to yell at them to shut up. He focused doggedly on his task, forcing down the nauseating turmoil of anger and guilt boiling in his guts.

His private channel clicked on. "Do I get to say I told you so?" Joker drawled.

Kaidan sighed heavily. "If I said no, would it make a difference?"

"Nah, probably not," the pilot answered jovially. "I told you so."

"Feel better now?"

"Yep!"

Kaidan shut down the channel, leaving him alone again in his sealed armor.

_Well, that makes one of us._


	4. Jack

Something was wrong. Garrus couldn't be sure what had happened since they'd first dropped onto the asteroid, but something in the air had changed. He hadn't been completely comfortable to begin with, dropping into combat with an untested team, but now the spirit that bound them was suffering some unspoken ill.

Wickham had obviously been bitterly unhappy about being left behind, but Shepard was firm in her decision to have the chief remain on the _Normandy_ because of her injury, even though it turned out to be less serious than Alenko had surmised. The commander herself seemed distant and brusque, her focus squarely on penetrating the batarian ship. Garrus could only guess their failure to save the engineers on the asteroid was a loss keenly felt by the entire team, but the cold aura permeating the air made him all the more edgy.

"Be ready for anything," Shepard had said as they breached the airlock, weightless in the short docking gantry extruded from the _Normandy_'s hull. Since the batarian ship was not built to any kind of Citadel standard, the gantry was poorly matched to the hull, leaving wide gaps into deep space that made Garrus irrationally nervous.

Garrus was somewhat surprised at Shepard's warning, considering it initially to be paranoia. His limited knowledge of the batarians painted them as always willing to negotiate, with a tradition for convoluted transactions of the kind that gave turians headaches, with many clauses and carefully exploited loopholes. They could be devious to the extreme, but in this situation, Garrus felt sure they would recognize they had nowhere to run.

But then, they weren't known for large-scale terrorist actions, either. They had withdrawn their embassy from the Citadel before Garrus had set foot on the station, so he had never encountered them in his time at C-Sec. He understood that these days, the batarians seldom strayed beyond their own borders, under the auspices of a totalitarian government regime. Those that did were renegades, mercantile pirates more interested in profit than ideological battles.

Their ship, designated _Enyo'Kan_, was smaller but wider than the _Normandy_; a scout-class vessel of batarian design favored by pirates for its low profile and swift engines. As they moved through the aft section, Garrus noted the less than meticulous cleaning job had left a few years' worth of grime built up in the corners of the bulkheads. While not exactly filthy, the dimly-lit ship had a decidedly dingy air that spoke of years of service outside any kind of formal or military function.

At a hallway junction, Shepard sent Garrus aft to check a large door that presumably led to the engineering section. Garrus inspected the display panel next to the reinforced portal. It flashed a warning red, busy with writing and symbols only one of which he recognized. He hurried back to the team.

"Looks like the engineering section is locked down for radiation," Garrus reported. "I don't think anyone is coming in or out."

"Joker said the drive core is leaking," Shepard said bluntly before turning away to lead the way forward toward the flight deck.

Garrus' HUD suddenly informed him that his comm system had picked up a transmission within the ship. It wasn't audio, but instead turned out to be a short burst of seemingly nonsense code. The turian didn't have time to contemplate the mysterious message as a flurry of movement erupted from the side of the wide common area. Garrus spun around to see several figures spill into the room, wearing a mishmash of different apparel. Gunfire exploded around them as a batarian voice yelled a command.

Shepard's team reacted instinctively, ducking for cover as the hiss of shields and chatter of weapon impacts filled the air. Garrus pushed himself up against the meager cover of a narrow bulkhead and trained his rifle around, drawing a bead on a figure advancing toward him, dangerously close and firing a steady stream from a pistol. Garrus opened fire and was somewhat startled when the man lurched backwards in a spray of blood, apparently completely unshielded.

Garrus didn't stop to contemplate his good fortune as he took aim across the room at the batarian who seemed to be barking orders and fired at him. The armored batarian dodged sideways as his shields crackled. Garrus caught a bloom of biotic energy out of the corner of his eye, and made the snap decision that the advantage was theirs, leaping forward to rain more gunfire on the batarian.

A distant sense of vicious satisfaction ran through him as the alien shuddered and died against the sloping wall. A figure darted out of cover past him, headed toward the team. Garrus whirled and took aim at the man as he bore down on the commander, waving a heavy length of metal rod.

"Stop!" Shepard yelled. "Cease fire!"

Garrus pulled the muzzle of his rifle up in surprise, watching perplexed as Shepard dodged inside the man's wild swing and rammed the butt of her shotgun into his stomach. It was a human! The man folded with a grunt, and Shepard reversed her grip and drove the gun butt sharply into his temple. He crumpled into a heap and lay still. Garrus noted in passing three more bodies sprawled on the ground.

"Commander..." Alenko said, his voice strained. Blue biotic distortion wreathed his body and that of another human who stood frozen in mid lunge, pistol raised. The man's face was oddly blank as he hung in the air.

Shepard closed with the man in two quick strides, dropping her shotgun and taking up position behind the man.

"Drop it and get clear," she ordered, face intent. "Nayar! Rifle down!"

The marine complied, his face a mask of confusion as he looked between Shepard and Alenko. The lieutenant lowered his outstretched hand, and the corona surrounding him flickered and died. At the same moment, Shepard grabbed the man's outstretched arm and wrenched it around behind him while simultaneously wrapping her left arm around his throat.

Free of the biotic hold, the man twisted and thrashed, reaching over his shoulder to try to pummel Shepard with his free hand, but the commander dropped her chin and let her helmet take the brunt of it as she maintained her iron grip. Garrus watched with a mix of fascination and discomfort as the man's eyes bulged and his jaw worked in a desperate attempt to draw breath. Within several seconds, his struggles weakened until finally his eyes rolled back and his body went slack. Shepard released her hold and let his body down to the ground, rolling him over onto his side.

"They should both be out for a bit," she said, collecting the man's pistol.

Garrus realized she must have deprived him of oxygen long enough to induce unconsciousness, but not kill him. Nayar voiced the turian's next thought before he could.

"Commander, who... who are they?"

Shepard crossed to the man she had clubbed and also rolled him onto his side. She tilted his head forward and pointed to a metal implant bolted directly to the back of the man's skull.

"Slaves," she said quietly.

Garrus could see the rim of scar tissue where the dark metal jack gripped flesh and bone. He felt a twist of horror in his gut. Even as an amateur at reading human reactions, it was obvious Alenko and Nayar shared the sentiment. All the color drained out of their faces. Garrus looked slowly around toward the man he had killed first, and saw the face was also human. A wave of shock coursed over his body.

"I..." the corporal started. He took a step back. "But I _killed_ one! I-"

"You defended yourself," Shepard said curtly, scanning the room.

"But-"

Shepard stepped toward the corporal and put a hand on his shoulder. "You didn't know. Never feel guilty about being alive, Nayar." She held the young marine's gaze for a long moment before he dropped his eyes to fl oor with a short nod.

"It's not your fault," Shepard said, turning away and picking up her shotgun. "I didn't think they'd send slaves after us."

"Why wouldn't they?" Garrus asked faintly.

"Because slaves are expensive," the commander answered with a bitter smirk. "Form up."

Garrus followed obediently, his mind wavering as he fought to focus on the danger that might still be waiting for them. Shepard's words were heartening, and, he reflected, true, but it didn't feel like enough.

They crossed through a long hallway that threaded the upper deck of the ship toward the bridge, sweeping side rooms as they passed. Garrus absently noted disheveled but empty crew quarters, some of which were suspiciously bare inside and bore only an exterior door panel.

Suddenly a side door hissed open behind them. The four of them whirled around, guns ready, to see an asari step through. She was dressed in a skin-tight outfit of a design totally foreign to Garrus, with long, irregular slashes that showed her blue skin underneath. He couldn't tell if the cuts were part of the intentional design or not, and the thought chilled him. In her right hand was a long, hooked knife.

Like the human slaves, the asari's eyes were dead, her face emotionless as she advanced into the room, knife held low. Garrus hissed softly between his teeth as he suddenly remembered the Thorian's asari plant-clone and her silent, relentless attacks. He wondered how they'd missed this asari in the sweep of the ship- she must have been hiding somewhere.

"Stand down!" Nayar yelled, brandishing his assault rifle.

"She's not going to listen to you," Shepard said warningly.

Alenko moved to step forward, but Nayar pushed in front of him. "No! I got this!" Without waiting for leave, he threw down his rifle and moved forward, adopting the stance of a close-quarters fighter.

"Lieutenant, back him up," Shepard ordered after a heartbeat of hesitation. "Vakarian, get this door open." She pointed to the end of the hall.

Garrus tore his gaze away from the spectral asari and hurried to the door panel. Behind him, the sounds of a scuffle broke out. Garrus muttered a calming mantra, trying to focus his mind as he forced the panel off its mountings. The corporal was probably safe- a slash from the knife would do little against Nayar's heavy combat armor, but a hard stab to a joint might penetrate the undersuit.

Garrus eschewed a hack, extruding molten omni-gel into the mechanism, which sparked and smoked as it died and disengaged the lock. The door ground open into a narrow, sloping cockpit. Blue holo-panels glowed along the walls and ceiling, surrounding the single, broad pilot seat. To one side of the chair stood a batarian clad in a sleek black flight suit with red trim, who raised his hands palms outward as Shepard swarmed into the room, shotgun in the lead. A second batarian scrambled out of the pilot's chair.

"We surrender!" the batarian said in a tone of forced congeniality. "I am captain Ragan Kor'noth and this is my second, Keoh. Under your Alliance convention, I request-"

"Call off your crew!" Shepard snapped.

"I'm afraid I have no more crew to order, human," Ragan said mildly as Keoh nervously eyed the open bore of Shepard's shotgun.

"Call them off!" Shepard repeated, her voice rising angrily.

"I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about, human," the batarian captain said with an obsequious smile, tilting his head slightly to the right. "How can I be held responsible for acts of loyalty from my servants? Now, I-"

The commander's shotgun boomed loudly in the confined space of the cabin. The point-blank shot caused Ragan's entire face to implode, spraying the control consoles with a geyser of blood, brains and bone. Keoh shrieked and danced away from his captain's shuddering corpse as the cold blue holo displays shivered and flickered.

Garrus suppressed a flinch as the body bounced off the wide pilot seat and flopped to the floor, spurting dark blood. A second later, a mechanical voice announced something in the batarian language over the ship's comms.

"Congratulations on your promotion, _Captain_," Shepard said coldly, lowering her gun and turning to Keoh. "Maybe you'll be smarter than your predecessor and not assume I don't know when I'm being insulted. Now, I suggest you consider your first order _very_ carefully."

The new captain's four eyes blinked rapidly, flicking back and forth between Shepard's implacable stare and the spectacle of gore in front of him. Finally, Keoh opened his mouth and stammered out a command. In response, the ship's VI made another announcement, followed by a short, eerie burst of sound that made Garrus' mandibles twitch.

Seconds passed. Without taking her eyes off the batarian, Shepard raised her voice. "Corporal, report!"

"I think they've stopped, Commander," came the reply from the hall. "She... stopped resisting."

"Good," Shepard said. "Your next act, _Captain_, will be to decrypt your full database and assist my team in uploading everything to my ship."

"I-" Keoh started.

"You are not _negotiating_ with the Spectre, batarian," Garrus said icily, cutting him off. "Just do it."

The word had the desired effect- whatever meager resolve Keoh might have had left seemed to wilt on the spot. Even if they didn't recognize Citadel authority, pirates had still learned to fear the intervention of its most powerful agents.

"Lieutenant, the captain has some files for us. Make sure he doesn't... _miss_ anything," Shepard said balefully. She turned and swept her gaze over Ragan's sprawled body, then bent and unclipped a small device from the dead batarian's belt.

Keoh looked around as Alenko stepped into the room, his face a hard mask. Garrus shadowed Shepard as she stood and left the command cabin, back out into the hallway. There, Nayar crouched over the recumbent form of the asari who lay curled up on the floor.

Garrus heard Shepard's quiet outlet of breath as she raised the small device taken from Ragan's belt and gingerly disconnected the tiny power cell, tossing it negligently over her shoulder. She then handed it to Garrus.

"Please destroy this completely," she said.

"What is it?" Garrus asked curiously, turning it over in his hands. A small oblong square of blue-black metal framed several unmarked amber buttons.

"Kill switch," Shepard replied quietly.

Garrus opened his omni-tool and used the interface to portion out a small blob of the omni-gel from his supply, dropping it onto the device. He could have reclaimed the device into his store of gel, but some impulse made him let the whole thing fall to the floor where it sizzled into a misshapen mass.

"I keep trying to tell her she's safe, Commander," Nayar said. "But she's just..."

"There's not much we can do right now, Corporal," Shepard answered. "There's an Alliance ship inbound from Terra Nova, it'll be here in under thirty minutes."

"But..." Nayar looked from the slave back to her. "Wait, we're... we're just _leaving_ them here?"

"We don't have a choice," Shepard said in a thick voice. "We're still facing a possible major threat, and Doctor Chakwas is not equipped to deal with the jacks in that time frame."

"These?" Nayar asked, pointing to the device protruding from the folds of the unfortunate asari's head. "I don't understand."

Shepard sighed. "You know the nonsense signal your comm-unit picked up when we were back in the crew section? It's a reciprocating callback that goes out to all the jacks on a prescribed cycle. If the jack doesn't get the new signal at the beginning of each cycle, it... kills the slave. Painfully."

Garrus glanced down at the little puddle of slag at his feet, sure now what Shepard had meant when she called it a kill switch.

"To... keep them from escaping?" Nayar asked.

"Not many try," Shepard said heavily. "Mostly it prevents... theft."

Horror flickered across Nayar's face as he seemed to struggle to speak. "We... we _let_ this happen?" he burst out, spreading his hands.

Shepard's eyes flashed. She opened her mouth to speak but was cut off when Alenko stepped through the door.

"No one _lets this happen_, Corporal!" the lieutenant snapped with uncharacteristic shortness. "But those statistics we all like to ignore don't fall out of the sky!"

For a second it seemed like he might say more, but he shut his mouth with a snap. Garrus' shoulders tightened reflexively at the sudden tension, as if the accumulated outrage hovering in the air would bleed into the hull and distort the metal itself.

"I know this isn't the heroic ending we're supposed to get, Nayar," Shepard said evenly, the momentary sadness vanished behind a flinty wall. "But now these people have a chance, and none of these slavers will do this to anyone else. Now we have to find out how deep this rabbit hole goes. We had a saying in the N's... No batarian ever throws just one grenade. Is the transfer done, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, Commander," he answered stiffly.

Garrus didn't have the faintest idea what a rabbit was or what their holes had to do with slavers, but he was more than ready to get off the batarian ship.

"Keoh!" Shepard barked. "Get out here!"

The batarian emerged hesitantly from the cockpit, eyeing the blood-spattered commander as if she were a live grenade.

"March," she ordered, pointing down the hall.

Keoh complied meekly. Garrus fell into step behind Shepard as she walked the batarian down to the crew area, selecting one of the bare cells and herding him into it.

"Tell Akilah I say hi," she said with a smirk before hitting the door panel. As soon as the door closed, she pulled out her pistol and fired a few rounds into the panel, which cracked and sparked.

"Who's, uh, Akilah?" Nayar asked tentatively.

"Captain Akilah Nasser leads the Pirate Activities Division of Alliance Central Intelligence," Shepard replied as she holstered her weapons and started back down the corridor. "I'm sure she's going to want to have a long conversation with him."

Garrus didn't want to think about it. The image of the dead slaves still crawled around his head, adding to the ache in his body from long hours of combat and tension. But back on the _Normandy_ were files that might contain answers.

_No rest tonight..._


	5. Vector

Kaidan lingered in the back of the crew section as long as he could after a quick shower, trying to collect himself. In truth, he didn't want to risk crossing Shepard alone in the middle of the ship. He wasn't sure he could look her in the face at the moment.

Wickham had set to the data from the batarian ship as soon as it had come in, and Shepard had ordered a debrief as soon as everyone had had a chance to change. Kaidan briefly considered abusing the ever-available migraine excuse, but quickly dismissed the idea. Lying to his commanding officer, whatever the circumstances, wasn't going to make him feel any better.

When he arrived in the comm room, he was glad to see Garrus already there, datapad in hand and talking to the commander in a low voice. Kaidan sank into his seat and studiously examined the floor. Within a minute, Nayar and Wickham also arrived. The chief's left forearm was encased in a new stabilizing cuff, and blue bruising showed over the edge up to her elbow.

"Let's start with what we know," Shepard started once they were seated, her tone all business. "Two batarian ships, scout class frigates, on the scene. At least a dozen batarians on the ground, but no formal insignias or uniforms."

"Pirates," Nayar stated.

Shepard nodded, her expression hard. "Clear evidence of slaving from the captured ship, though the only slaves on board appeared to have been owned by the captain and were not... being taken for sale."

Kaidan suppressed a shudder. The memories of the ship were still very fresh, and he could tell from the tautness of Shepard's voice that just talking about it in plain terms was difficult. Sympathy and a desire to do something to help clawed at him, jostling with the anger.

"So..." she continued, "the question is what they were doing throwing an asteroid at Terra Nova. The motivation for the attack seems to be some kind of terrorist action."

"I overheard the batarians talking in the second bunker, Commander," Garrus said. "They seemed to be at odds with Balak's mission. They were complaining that it wasn't profitable."

Shepard nodded. "That's more in line with what I'd expect from them. Balak's behavior was... unusually rabid. But they've been behind their iron curtain for twelve years now, who knows what kind of propaganda their government is feeding them."

"I bet Torfan features prominently," Wickham said with a smirk.

Nayar rolled his eyes. "How can they still be whining about a raid on a pirate base?"

"It wasn't just a _raid_, Nayar," the chief retorted hotly. "It was a massacre."

Nayar shrugged and lapsed back into sullen silence. The young marine seemed surly and withdrawn since the return from the batarian ship, but Kaidan could hardly fault him for it.

"The important question," Shepard cut in, "is if this is an isolated incident by one extremist or if it's the start of a new wave of attacks. Unfortunately, the geth attack has destabilized the Citadel to the point where we're more vulnerable than ever."

After a moment of silence, Chief Wickham spoke up. "It's the perfect opportunity, strategically. Decreased military presence, looser security…"

Kaidan felt a flush of irritation, tempted to thank her for pointing out the obvious. But he kept his mouth shut, keenly aware the turmoil in his head wasn't going to help anything. No one in the room was in a good mood, and the last thing this situation needed was pettiness.

"What company was funding the asteroid move?" Shepard asked.

Kaidan shook off his annoyance and tapped a few commands into his datapad- he'd looked up the information as soon as they'd gotten back on board. "It was a joint venture between Khore Mining and Tanaka Heavy Industries, with a sizable incentive from Terra Nova's government."

"Khore... why do I know that name?" Nayar asked.

"Their processed metals division is one of Hahne-Kedar's main suppliers," Kaidan said. "They made huge profits from the early stage of Terra Nova's platinum rush. But they weren't doing the move, they were just major investors. Tanaka was handling the logistics of the move."

Shepard shifted, looking pensive. "So, in order for the batarians to even find the asteroid, information had to have been leaked to them. It doesn't seem likely they happened to find one rock in the middle of an entire system by sheer happenstance."

Garrus cocked his head curiously. "How secure is an operation like that?"

There was a moment of silence. "I don't know," Kaidan said finally, "but my guess is, Tanaka was going to be more worried about rival companies snooping around than pirates. They wouldn't have any reason to think pirates would attack them; it's not a traditionally profitable target. You can't steal an asteroid."

"From a hacker's perspective, how secure does that make it?" Shepard asked.

"Not very, I don't think," Wickham ventured. "There's too many people involved, across multiple companies. There's an awful lot of opportunity for leaks in a situation like that... and we're not talking about torch specs or anything, all the batarians needed were the travel plans."

"That reduces the probability of an inside job," Shepard said. "All right. What did we get from the _Enyo'Kan_?"

"Their data is a mess," Wickham said with a grimace. "There aren't any crew logs to speak of, just a lot of disparate files."

"I can't imagine pirates are big on accountability and data trails," Nayar said.

"Any black box logs?" Kaidan asked. Most species included such a device on their vessels in one form or another; a secure, purpose-built server that saved all engineering data for a given time.

"Yes sir," the chief replied. "I dumped that first, but I don't know how much use it's going to be. Someone blanked the tracks that recorded travel vectors. We've only got burn times and engine output."

Kaidan nodded, feeling disappointment. "Let's see it."

Wickham tapped a few inputs into her datapad, and an array of numbers appeared on the holo-display. "I derived estimated distances for each engine burn, but like I said, no direction data."

"I guess a trail of breadcrumbs was too much to hope for," Nayar muttered.

"What about anything that looks financial?" Garrus asked.

"Not a whole lot, at least nothing obvious," Wickham replied. "But... I've never dealt with anything like this before. There could be extensive obfuscation at work."

Kaidan knew the pirate economy relied on a dizzying blend of currencies and barter for goods and raw materials, the kind of cutthroat supply-and-demand economy that favored shrewd opportunists like the batarians. There was no formal system that could easily be traced. He wondered absently if they had contingency protocols that wiped sensitive information off of their network in case of capture... He knew for a fact the _Normandy_ did, but that was expected of a top-secret military vessel.

"This is what seems suspicious to me so far." Wickham uploaded more data to the holo-display.

Several file names flashed by.

"Wait, stop," Garrus said suddenly. "What's that one?"

Wickham highlighted the file name the turian had pointed out, a string of numbers with a long alpha-numeric prefix. Once opened, the file displayed more numbers which Kaidan immediately recognized as coordinates and travel vectors.

"Yes, that's it, that's like what I found. It's a Citadel comm tag," Garrus announced, a note of triumph in his voice. "The file name is the comm batch number, and the prefix denotes the company that owned the sending data port. Are there any more with that prefix?"

Wickham entered a quick search string and let the computer scan the database. A few seconds later, five results came up.

Garrus let out a small hiss. "Two of those match my evidence exactly. The contents are obviously coded, but they refer to the Asgard system and various money transfers."

"Hmm... they're just numbers, it isn't much," Wickham said.

"What it is, is probable cause," Garrus pronounced. "One match might have been a coincidence, but two is pushing it. With this, I can get warrants for the full communication logs that my data comes from."

"That's going to cause a diplomatic stink," Kaidan mused.

Garrus shrugged. "Probably. But companies operating on the Citadel are beholden to C-Sec where internal security is a factor- it's in the contracts they sign to operate on the station."

"But we're no closer to where the pirates came from..."

Kaidan skimmed over the drive data again, brows furrowed, as the others continued to talk. He felt like he sometimes did when faced with a batch of ornery code- there was something there, just out of reach. Programming was all about patterns, logic that as it got more complex, gave off the illusion of randomness. Coming at it from the other direction meant penetrating the illusion and finding the pattern. He absently drummed his fingers on his leg as he tried to force the picture to come into focus.

"Lieutenant," Shepard said, almost making him jump. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm... not sure yet," he answered distractedly, reflexively avoiding looking at her. The single, impersonal word of his rank sounded like an accusation, and the acidic tension in his stomach made it hard to think.

He stood up and crossed to the holo-display, trying to force everything else out of his head. Touching a few controls, he re-oriented the data display into columns and hid everything but the distance extrapolation Wickham had derived from engine output and burn time. He realized in the noise of numbers, he kept seeing the same batches of two repeat themselves. Each pair wasn't exactly the same, but close enough it didn't feel like coincidence.

One of Joker's random comments occurred to him then, something about mass relays. The huge and inscrutable machines 'listened' on certain sub-space bands- all a ship had to do to activate one was broadcast a signal on the right band while within a minimum distance of the relay, at which point the mass relay would spin up and hurl the ship across space. But something in the mass relay's incomprehensibly powerful field caused a brief yaw in a ship's element zero core output. Joker had some convoluted theory about what caused it, but it wasn't the cause that mattered in this case.

"Wickham, do you have core output data?" Kaidan asked.

"Yes sir. I didn't think it was relevant, but it's there." The chief turned and tapped a few inputs into the display.

Her assumption made sense, given that core output didn't translate into distance or vectors the way engine output did. But that wasn't what he was looking for. Kaidan correlated the two sets of data, isolating the suspicious pairs.

"What is it?" Wickham asked curiously, peering over his shoulder.

"Look, these blips in core output are mass relay jumps," Kaidan said. "If you look at the engine output, they perfectly bracket these two burns of nearly identical distance."

"That's weird..." Wickham said. "Jump in, go somewhere, turn around and go back, jump out."

Kaidan nodded. "Right. It's a short distance with a layover time of under two hours, no charge dumps, no side trips. And it keeps cropping up, the same pattern with nearly the same distance. Eleven times in the last six months, which is as long as this data goes back. And the last time was a week ago."

"I tried extrapolating where they'd come from by backtracking distances, but the further we get away from Terra Nova the more possible paths there are, and it goes exponential really fast." Wickham squinted at the display.

"Show me," Kaidan said. He imagined he could feel Shepard's gaze boring into his back.

Wickham chewed her lip as she rapidly called up files from the _Normandy's_ server. The drive data disappeared and was replaced with a map that looked like a simplified version of the panoramic display of the CIC. Green blips indicating mass relays popped up, followed by a nest of lines of various colors linking them.

"The lines fade to red as they approach the most unlikely path," Wickham explained. "And once they get into the Terminus Systems, well..."

Kaidan examined the pathways curiously. "Okay, eliminate everything that isn't this data pair." He highlighted the most recent pair.

The mass of lines diminished dramatically, but the short hops were dispersed over the map. The calculations had pegged the most likely areas of travel as trending toward the Attican Traverse, a bias that would be easy to assume given the nature of the ship and its occupants. But an entirely different possibility nagged at Kaidan.

"What about this?" He zoomed the display in, pulling up the Serpent Nebula and the Citadel. The lines were dark red, but they showed what he suspected- a jump into Citadel Space via one of the several relays that peppered the area, a burn toward the station, then back out again.

Wickham looked doubtful. "Even if a pirate vessel would go anywhere near the Citadel, why would they fly halfway there and then turn around and go home again?"

"They would if they had a rendezvous," Shepard said from behind him, her voice flat.

"It would explain why they wouldn't linger in-system, too," Garrus put in.

"Wouldn't they get blown away by sentry sats at the Citadel-side relay the minute they didn't have the right authentications?" Nayar asked.

"Not if someone sold them good codes," Garrus said in a low voice. "Anyway, thanks to the geth, the sentry network is in shambles right now."

"Pirate trade on the Citadel itself," Shepard murmured. "If this pans out, Executor Pallin is going to have kittens."

"Isn't this kind of a long shot?" Wickham asked. "It's all circumstantial evidence. Those numbers are just as likely to have come from somewhere else entirely."

"That's true," Garrus said, tapping his taloned fingers against the side of his chair. "They'd need a strong motivation to take such an enormous risk."

Kaidan turned and went back to his seat. "What would they want there? The Citadel doesn't produce anything they can't get somewhere else."

"Except... information," Garrus mused. "The Citadel produces and consolidates economic, governmental and military intel from all corners of Citadel space."

"Information like, say, a certain asteroid's location and crew compliment," Nayar suggested sourly.

"Among other things," Kaidan said. "Imagine how much information like that is worth, even to the batarian government. It wouldn't surprise me if they were secretly funding Balak... or at least 'encouraging' him."

"All they'd need is a willing fanatic to lead the charge," Wickham said with a smirk. "They maul us, pirates get blamed. Nice and neat."

Shepard's arms were folded, her brow furrowed in thought. All of their information _was_ all still conjecture, but Garrus' original intel had also been circumstantial as well. It was up to her to decide what was the best guess.

After a moment, Shepard turned and tapped the internal comms. "Joker, set course for the Citadel, all possible speed."

"Aye aye," the pilot answered.

"Garrus, as soon as we're in comms range, get those warrants," she continued, turning back to them.

"Yes, Commander." Garrus nodded, standing up. "I believe I can also get assistance from C-Sec."

Kaidan absently swiped his sweating palms over his pants. The end of the briefing meant an opportunity to talk to Shepard, but he had no idea what he even wanted to say. He was exhausted, and everything was still all sharp edges in his head. Just remembering what had come out of his mouth down on the asteroid sent a sharp stab of guilt knifing through him. But the side of him that was an Alliance officer demanded accountability, justification for the lives of the engineers. She'd seemed to almost enjoy killing the batarians, and he couldn't help but feel a line had been crossed.

"Commander, if we're done, could I speak with you?" Nayar asked suddenly.

Kaidan looked up, catching the faint tightening that flickered across Shepard's face. He wondered what it meant. She looked as exhausted as he felt.

"Yes, Corporal," she said evenly, then addressed the rest of the team. "Dismissed."

Kaidan felt a rush of something like relief as he walked out of the comm room. He overheard Garrus ask the chief if they could go over the files from the batarian ship some more, but found himself quickly retreating downstairs into the depths of the empty crew section.

The relief swiftly curdled into disappointment. There would be no resolution tonight, only the misery of a long night curled up in his pod, alone with his turmoil.


	6. Mainteinance

Some twenty-four hours after the return from the batarian ship, the general mood on the _Normandy_ had not improved. It helped nothing that the tiny frigate still felt empty, crewed only by those able to answer Shepard's abrupt request. The commander herself had disappeared into her quarters, and the human marines seemed moodily wrapped up in their work.

Garrus had attempted to sate a nagging curiosity by looking up what a 'kitten' was, but ended up losing a few hours surfing through the human encyclopedia, gawking at pictures of the bizarre cavalcade of creatures that inhabited Earth, both now and in past millennium.

In the midst of his search he found himself wondering, not for the first time, what had possessed the humans to name their home planet 'dirt'. It made him think about his grandmother, who stubbornly referred to Palavan by a thoroughly archaic name that roughly translated to 'The Middle Place', a name only used by her native country. He had to remind himself that home planets tended not to be named by popular demand like a colony, but rather by the civilization that happened to be on top of the heap when the concept of 'planet' was popularized. He reflected that 'Earth' had a certain basic, elemental appeal- it was after all, a fairly accurate description.

Finally, he figured out that 'kitten' was not in fact a species in itself, but the diminutive name for the juvenile of one _Felis Catus_, a small quadrupedal furry animal many humans apparently kept as domestic pets. He was no closer to divining what this could possibly have to do with Executor Pallin, but he decided the question could safely be left for another time, filed away with the innumerable other human linguistic enigmas. Somewhere between bored and worried, he went looking for Alenko.

The hull of the Mako loomed in the cargo bay as the elevator doors opened. Garrus paused and swept his gaze over the familiar tank, the indomitable vehicle that had survived the punishment of Shepard's missions to some of the most unforgiving places in the galaxy. It was a little hard to believe it was the same tank that had been to faraway Ilos, only to be catapulted bodily through a mass relay back to the Citadel.

The commander probably could have requested a replacement, but she'd insisted on keeping the same Mako after it had been repaired. Garrus quietly approved of the decision, as he considered the ornery vehicle as much part of the _Normandy_'s crew as the sentient beings. And as Alenko had remarked, no piece of technology worked as advertised- better to keep the familiar quirks than get a batch of new ones.

Garrus idly ran his talons along the sloped nose of the Mako as he circled around to the far side. There, Lieutenant Alenko was reaching into an open side panel toward the rear of the vehicle. Behind him, thick plates of battered armor were strewn about on the floor, removed from the section that had taken a direct missile hit down on the asteroid from one of the base's defense turrets.

Of the human crew of the _Normandy_, Garrus felt the closest kinship with the lieutenant. When he had first come aboard, he'd felt it most appropriate to place himself at the bottom of their Alliance hierarchy. Still stinging from Executor Pallin's dismissal of his work on Saren, Garrus hadn't felt presumptive enough to demand anything of the human Spectre who had, surprisingly enough, agreed to let him come along on her mission.

Shepard remained his superior, even if she often freely blurred that line. But now, after months, many battles, and a promotion back into C-Sec, he felt more on equal footing with Alenko, not just as a brother in arms but as a friend.

Suddenly there was a crackle and a flash of blue, causing Alenko to recoil violently. The human performed a brief stamping dance of pain which culminated in a vicious kick to the Mako's tire and a string of invective disparaging the tank's parentage.

Garrus watched the decidedly uncharacteristic outburst with raised eyebrows. "Are you all right?" he inquired tentatively.

Alenko glanced his way, wringing his hand. "Oh, I'm great. Perfect end to a perfect day," the lieutenant grumbled disgustedly.

The turian blinked, then decided Alenko was likely being sarcastic. He stepped up to the open panel and peered in, noting the scorched cabling within.

"Hm, I didn't know the damage was that bad," he said.

"Yeah," Alenko said morosely. "Feedback fried the shield emitter on this side, we're going to have to replace the whole damn thing. Just to make things easy, a couple of the capacitors are still holding a charge."

"Can I help?" Garrus asked.

The lieutenant rubbed his carbon and grease-stained hands together. "Sure," he said finally. "We need to get the burnt stuff out of there, but watch out, some of the connectors are live."

Garrus settled into the now comfortably familiar ritual of repair, a language he easily understood. Between them, they managed to clean out the damaged systems and began installing replacements, using the cargo bay's omni-gel fabricator to rebuild the specialized parts necessary. Much larger than the omni-tool-based micro-fabricators, this one could handle more complicated items, reorganizing and weaving the gel into parts based on preset templates.

As an hour wore into another, it became evident that Alenko wasn't going to volunteer whatever was weighing on him. A few months ago, Garrus would have let it pass, preferring not to meddle in what wasn't his business, but concern dogged him. Whatever was affecting his friend was also affecting the commander, and thus the whole ship.

At length, Garrus gave up on trying to adhere to circuitous decorum and simply asked.

"You are upset about how the mission went, aren't you?"

The human stopped what he was doing and drew a long breath, his eyes distant as he absently scraped blackened grit off the tool in his hands. For a moment, Garrus thought he might not answer at all.

"It's just... we should have saved the hostages," he said finally, voice tight. "She... Shepard didn't even try!"

Garrus frowned. "Yes she did, she risked her life to try to get to the bomb in time."

Alenko shook his head. "No, I mean the bombs shouldn't have been set in the first place."

"You would have let Balak walk away, then?" Garrus asked. "Someone determined to murder an entire colony of your people?"

"Well..." Alenko hesitated. "I wouldn't have been happy about it, but innocent lives should come first. It wasn't right."

Garrus felt his mandibles flicker with tension. He couldn't help but feel that down on the asteroid, Corporal Nayar's enthusiasm had fouled up his sniper shot, a shot that might have prevented the bombs being armed at all. But such was battle, and in his mind a soldier was measured by how they dealt with things going wrong, not right. His training in the turian military had ingrained in him the idea of total war, where he was taught that it was foolish to leave your foe in a position where they could come to strike at you again, and that it saved lives to ensure that your enemy was utterly and completely beaten.

But it was a fundamental difference in philosophy that Garrus didn't feel like arguing. "It's our privilege to disagree," he said finally.

"What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?" Alenko said irritably.

Garrus hissed lightly, frustration rising. "Is it that humans so often say one thing when they mean something else that you think everyone does the same?" he demanded. "I _mean_ exactly what I said. It's the _privilege_ of those below to think that they might have done something differently than those above! It is the _burden_ of those above to actually _make_ that choice. And if you really think the choice was wrong, well, you have regulations, don't you? Courts?"

A grimace flickered across Alenko's face as he stared hard at the Mako's exposed panel for a long moment. Garrus found himself regretting the suggestion- what little he knew of human laws was that they were oppressive at best, threatening prison terms for something as inconsequential as casual drug use.

"That... that won't bring anyone back," Alenko said finally. "And it doesn't justify my big damn mouth," he muttered.

"I don't understand," Garrus said quizzically, distantly relieved.

The lieutenant sighed, then waved a dismissive hand. "Never mind, it's not important."

Garrus frowned. "Why do you say that? It clearly is."

Alenko stopped, mouth open. "I meant... I don't want to talk about it," he said finally.

"So why not say that instead?"

"I..." The lieutenant's brows knitted together in consternation. "This is why we drive turians nuts, isn't it?" he said after a moment. "I wasn't trying to deceive you, I didn't even think about it. But we do that all the time, talk in ambiguous half-truths. It must sound like we're talking in code."

Garrus thought for a moment, suddenly recalling a conversation he'd had with Liara a short while after the Novaria mission. The asari archeologist loved to talk about culture, and it seemed that even after a short time on the _Normandy_, she could offer insights that never would have occurred to Garrus.

"It is a code, your culture's... code," he said. "When a turian joins a new group, whether it's a family, a work crew, or a military unit, we naturally try to find ways to fit in as fast as possible. Our lives are... defined by the hierarchies we keep. Do you remember when I talked about spirits?"

Alenko nodded.

"Your word, spirit, is loaded down with your human meanings," Garrus continued. "It's not really a good translation for our word, only the closest one, I guess." The turian thought again for a long moment. Humans seemed to like analogies. Since they so often related one thing to something else, maybe it would help here.

"Think of it like... your body," he ventured. "All the parts that make it up work to one purpose, so that your mind, your _spirit_, can achieve its goal. Sometimes some of those parts go wrong, and the others have to help bring everything back into harmony."

Alenko frowned thoughtfully.

"My example is a clumsy one..." Garrus said.

"No, I think I see what you mean," Alenko said. "Like you said, humans think of spirits as external, supernatural beings, but you're talking about... the sum of parts."

Garrus nodded. "So when a turian joins a group of non-turians, we still try to fit in, to become part of that sum. But we can't rely on our traditions, so we have to make do with trial and error. Whether we like it or not, we're always strongly affected by the spirit of the group, good or bad. Humans seem so often very individual."

"We like to think that. We're still social animals, though," the lieutenant said. "I always wondered why some turians seemed to like to try and use human idioms. It sounds weird to us, but they're trying to understand, aren't they?"

"Yes," Garrus replied. "Some of us try, and learn. But some of us get frustrated, and others don't try at all. We'll always have an easier time with your military, because you have a hierarchy we understand. Once we place ourselves within it, we know how to relate to those above and those below. But your civilian population doesn't have that hierarchy. Or, if you do, it's far too convoluted for us."

"Some turians just default to assuming humans are 'those below', I bet," Alenko smirked.

Garrus shrugged. "I suppose so, yes. But you have to understand, among turians there's no stigma associated with being a lower rank. The problem is that some turians consider humans too much as outsiders, not part of our world at all."

"Being outside the hierarchy is worse than being low ranking, then."

"Well, yes. Without a spirit to belong to, well... you're something _less_."

Alenko was silent for a long moment. "Well, that makes a certain amount of sense," he said, half to himself.

They spent a few minutes testing the repaired shield array, re-balancing the output of each of the emitters along the perimeter of the Mako.

"I often think about the chain of events that led us here," Garrus mused as they fitted a new armor plate over the shield emitter. "One thing out of place, and Sovereign would have succeeded. It could have been a very small thing, too. It could have been just a few seconds somewhere."

A dark cloud crossed Alenko's features. "I don't like thinking that people _had_ to die for anything to be the way it is."

Garrus glanced toward the lieutenant, then shook his head. "You misunderstand me. I don't believe the universe _wants_ to be a certain way... I don't think it cares what we do. Maybe that makes it all the more tenuous that we broke the Reaper's cycle.

"If Terra Nova had died, the spirit of humanity would have been shaken to the core, at a time when the spirit of the Citadel badly needs you. Did those engineers have to die for Terra Nova to live, for the Citadel to live? I prefer to think not, and if I'd been in command, maybe I would have chosen differently. But then, I don't know if I would have succeeded in saving the colony.

"I don't know. I _can't_ know. Any more than... Any more than I know how you get along in life with so many extra _digits_."

Alenko looked at him with a surprised expression. The turian held up his three-fingered hands and shrugged slightly. The lieutenant laughed suddenly, wearily, but gratifying nonetheless for Garrus, who had risked his decidedly flimsy grasp of human humor to try and lighten the mood.

"So that's the real secret behind some turians resenting us- finger envy," Alenko said with a smirk.

"Envy?" Garrus said with deliberate haughtiness. "Perish the thought. It's a sign of degeneracy."

Alenko snickered. "You sound like one of those Terra Firma rejects."

"I'm related to one of those," Garrus said ruefully. "My grandmother is a conservative who is convinced that 'humanisms' will spread among turians like a disease, and that our society will fall apart. Your religion has already started to 'infect' some of us."

"Bhuddism is a social evil now?" Alenko said mildly. "I thought it was about jovial fat guys, incense and sitting around talking about how great non-materialism is."

"Exactly!" Garrus nodded vehemently. "The doom of civilization as we know it." Such hyperbole didn't come naturally to Garrus, but there was a certain reckless fun to it.

Alenko just chuckled and wearily shook his head. In truth, nothing was solved. But perhaps because there could be no bringing anyone back from the dead, it was important to reinforce the bonds that kept the spirit whole.


	7. Facade

For the third time that day, Shepard simply marched into the office of their target as if she owned the place, ignoring the startled protests of the secretary as they passed. Kaidan tried to keep his expression neutral as he followed; Wickham, Nayar, Garrus and a C-Sec team in tow.

They had been at it all morning, executing Garrus' search warrants. So far they had found nothing overtly suspicious, though a large volume of data waited to be examined by C-Sec's technicians.

The first company they'd hit had been a volus consortium that sold convoluted investments and shares. The rotund little aliens had been cooperative, seemingly utterly surprised by the warrants. The second had been mostly salarian-run, and Kaidan had a hard time not finding them suspicious, but their thorough search had revealed nothing.

By the time they headed for the third company, Garrus was getting restive. While Spectres had legal leave to operate in any way they saw fit, the Citadel itself was C-Sec's jurisdiction by tradition. Executor Pallin was particularly attached to this, not hesitating to voice his objections when a Spectre meddled in what he considered his affairs, and Garrus was no doubt beginning to feel the heat.

To Kaidan's surprise, their third target was owned by a human, a company of perhaps three dozen who specialized in data management. The building was in the Third Ward of the Citadel, in a district that had escaped major damage from Sovereign's attack. Densely packed in with its neighbors, they had to find their way through a circuitous route of walkways to access the building.

Inside, curious heads popped up to look over the chest-high dividers as Shepard and crew bustled noisily into the library-quiet office. After Garrus came Tetrarch Kanor Venrik, the turian officer in command of the two squads of four C-Sec agents. He was somewhat taller than Garrus, towering nearly a foot over the humans, his metallic face painted in stark white markings that stood out against his dark blue and gray armor. The two squads were a mix of turians and salarians and one asari, the latter of which had adopted the bemused expression of a person who had disturbed a nest of ants.

A man stalked out of a back office towards them. He appeared to be in his fifties, with black hair and a neatly-trimmed suit. He looked around the armed and armored intruders with an expression of surprise and irritation.

"Mister Adam Kuriama?" Garrus asked.

"Yes, that's me," the human replied suspiciously.

Garrus squared his shoulders. "I am Praetor Garrus Vakarian, here to execute a search and seizure warrant for all data pertaining to communications between this address and Citadel hub three for a period of the last month. Please stand down and cooperate with our agents."

"Step away from your terminals immediately!" Venrik ordered crisply, addressing the room at large in his booming voice.

Looking at each other uncertainly, the office workers shuffled out of their chairs. The two squads of C-Sec agents fanned out, herding the workers towards the back wall.

"You can't come storming in here, waving weapons around!" Kuriama flared. "This is a place of business, we have rights!"

"Indeed," Garrus said coolly, holding up a datapad. "But I have a warrant."

Kaidan watched it all unfold as the CEO continued to splutter indignantly at Garrus. It seemed like overkill, but it was easy to forget that Citadel Security was more like a standing army than a police force. Since the turians had joined the Citadel, they had come to dominate C-Sec operations, with the full blessings of the asari. Garrus had explained that C-Sec was now run more or less like a turian military branch, even borrowing their rank structure.

And one thing the turians did not do was take threats lightly, a trend that had only intensified since the instability in the aftermath of Saren's attack. Two salarian agents busied themselves at a terminal, chattering at each other in their fast speech, while the other agents spread out among the cubicles.

A ripple went through the workers as they muttered among themselves. Suddenly it seemed like they were all looking at Shepard. Kaidan resisted the urge to edge toward her protectively.

"Lieutenant?" Wickham murmured from beside him.

"What have you got?" Kaidan whispered back. He could hear the soft sounds of her omni-tool.

"Eezo cores, sir, and a lot of them," the chief said. "Below us and a little south."

Kaidan narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, unable to fathom any reason why this company should have element zero cores of any kind on-site. He caught Shepard's eye and surreptitiously gestured downward. Shepard nodded very slightly, then turned abruptly and walked over to one of the workers standing along the wall.

"What's below this office?" she asked conversationally.

The man blinked. "Uh... a warehouse, ma'am," he ventured.

"Oh? What are you storing there?"

"I think it's-"

"The space is rented out to a client," Kuriama said loudly, cutting the man off. He pushed past Garrus and strode imperiously up to Shepard.

"That client would be who?" she asked mildly.

"That's confidential," Kuriama declared.

"No doubt," Shepard purred. "Well, Mister Confidential is welcome to come speak to me at his leisure. Where's the entrance?"

"That way, ma'am," the office worker replied, pointing past the cubicles towards the far end of the room.

"Ashcroft!" Kuriama roared.

The man flinched but continued. "There's, uh, a service entrance marked A4. Otherwise, the cargo loading bays are outside at street level, in the back. The doors are kept locked, though."

"Thank you for your cooperation," Shepard said, then turned back. "Kuriama, I'll need you to open it."

Kuriama's mouth set into a hard line as he glared furiously at Shepard.

The commander just shrugged. "It's your repair bill, my friend."

Shepard rounded up her team with a curt signal as she swept past the fidgeting office workers. Kaidan heard Garrus issue an order to the C-Sec officer before hurrying after them.

"Is this wise, Commander?" the turian asked quietly when he caught up. "My warrant covers this office only."

"That's why _I'm_ here," Shepard said.

"I know, Commander, but, well, Executor Pallin is already, as you say, having kittens," Garrus said. "If we keep this up, he's going to come down on us hard. He might not be able to stop you, but he can make our lives very difficult."

"We're close," Shepard said in a predatory tone. "This reeks. Those salarians at the last place got all wound up about their secrets, but Kuriama is hiding something from _me_. There's the door. Chief, get it open."

As Wickham set to work on the nondescript portal, Garrus fidgeted, glancing over his shoulder. Kaidan felt sympathetic- the turian had a large responsibility thrust on him, and after following a Spectre around for a while, he'd been forced back into a place where he was supposed to toe the line.

"I don't get why the CEO didn't just unlock the door, he must have the codes if he owns the building," Wickham said as she worked.

"Plausible deniability," Kaidan suggested. "If we find anything incriminating, he can pull the 'it's not mine' excuse."

"I tried asking nicely," Shepard said with another shrug.

Kaidan smirked. He tried concentrating on the task at hand, tried not to think about the fact she'd barely so much as looked at him since they'd docked at the Citadel and set out for the Wards. There were fleeting moments when everything seemed normal, but they didn't linger. Earlier in the day, it had been easier to focus on the job, but hours later the facade was starting to wear thin.

The door finally opened to a set of descending metal stairs flanked by an open-sided cargo elevator. A few disused crates were stacked in the corner, topped by an open toolbox. Shepard bypassed the elevator and strode down the stairs, which went down two stories before bottoming out at a dun metal door.

Pale amber chemical lamps illuminated the space beyond, set into the ceiling at long intervals. The door faced a wide corridor formed by crates of various sizes stacked into rows. Along the ceiling, some twenty feet up, was a system of tracks for the oblong loading crane visible near the far wall. Motes of dust hung in the air, the musty smell suggesting the air filtration system wasn't performing up to spec. A mass of dirty footprints converged on the doorway before spreading out into the room, pale against the dark metal of the floor- the metal of the Citadel itself.

"What are we looking for?" Shepard asked, peering around the room.

"This way, Commander," Wickham said, checking her omni-tool. The chief set off down the rows of crates.

Kaidan glanced down the rows as they passed, noting the traces on the floor that suggested more equipment moving back and forth. There were no company logos on the crates, and the serial numbers seemed haphazard at best- some had no numbers at all.

Wickham abruptly rocked to a stop, then turned on her heel and walked down a row. Thickly reinforced but otherwise featureless cargo containers were stacked floor to ceiling, the kind Kaidan associated with moving heavy materials. They were neatly interlocked at the corners, side panels closed and battered from years of use, but grime built up around the corners told Kaidan they hadn't been moved in some time.

"Just our luck this'll be someone's unused furniture," Nayar commented, fingering his rifle.

"No couch _I _ever heard of needs an element zero core," Wickham said dryly. She reached to a panel, slid it upwards and thumbed the thick switch underneath.

The slatted side panel of the crate retracted noisily, telescoping upwards. Kaidan blinked in surprise at the contents, an orderly rack housing multiple familiar shapes. The combat drones sat at rest, their stabilizer vanes tucked neatly along their flanks.

"Oh boy. What a nice collection of side-tables," Wickham said sarcastically, glancing at Nayar.

The corporal bristled. "I-"

A bloom of blue light erupted inside the container as the head lights of the entire flock of drones switched on simultaneously.

"Uh..." Wickam breathed, eyes wide.

Kaidan felt a rush of gooseflesh as a mass of gravitational distortions formed within arm's reach, accompanied by the thrum of multiple eezo cores engaging.

Nayar took a step back, raising his rifle. "Yeah, that's not good."

A rattling sound abruptly echoed through the room. Kaidan snapped his head around to see the side panels of the other crates in the row ratcheting open, spilling the same soft light.

"And about to get worse!" Shepard said, grabbing her shotgun off her back.

Kaidan lost the rest of what she said as the dozen or more drones suddenly stormed out of the crate in front of them, sliding sideways in perfect formation as their gun mounts disengaged and their stabilizer vanes splayed outwards. He backpedaled out of the way, grabbing Nayar by the arm as the flock filled the hallway between them and the rest of the team.

There was a heartbeat in which Kaidan briefly hoped the drones wouldn't do what he feared was coming, but seemingly as one, the baleful targeting eyes locked in on the team.

"Get to cover! Go!" Shepard yelled from the other side of the swarm.

As her voice cracked over the comms, Kaidan raised his hands and pulled dark energy in around him, letting the surge of adrenaline wash through the familiar rush of power as he forced the local gravity into a pinpoint whorl. The lead drones skittered sideways, their servos whining as they crashed into each other and stayed locked together. The other drones swerved wildly, trying to compensate. Kaidan whirled around to see another crate full of drones emptying out behind him.

"Come on, Corporal!" he barked to Nayar, then dropped his shoulder and charged the second flock. The deploying drones bounced haphazardly off his helmet and upraised arm as he bulled through them, away from the central corridor towards the back wall. He slowed and turned just long enough to confirm that Nayar was on his heels. Above them, a towering column of drones filled the space. Kaidan shoved the corporal around the corner of the stack just as gunfire exploded through the air, raining sparks off the metal containers.

Nayar swore, wild-eyed, as Kaidan herded him down the back wall at a dead run. Arbitrarily, he chose another row and ducked down, only to see a swarm of drones rounding the corner at the far end. In his HUD, the rest of the team's transponders were moving away back in the direction of the entrance.

"Here, sir!" Nayar panted from behind Kaidan.

The lieutenant turned to see the corporal slip into a gap between the stacks of crates. He reversed course and ducked in after him, following the young marine as he wove deeper into the dim, narrow spaces.

"Damn it, Garrus, where're your squads?" Shepard demanded over the comms. Kaidan heard the dull thud of gunfire in the background.

"Coming, Commander!" Garrus responded. "But the bottom door locked them out, they have to burn through it!"

"Shit," Nayar muttered from beside Kaidan. "This just keeps getting better and better."

"We went and punched the hornet's nest," Kaidan agreed, trying to get his bearings in the labyrinth. He could faintly hear the drones searching for them, but the sound bounced around, directionless.

"I think I'm picking up a control signal for the drones, Commander!" Wickham said suddenly.

"Where?"

"I can't localize it, but it's close!"

"Chief, Garrus, load it up," Kaidan interjected. "We'll triangulate! Cover me, Nayar."

The corporal pushed past him in the narrow space and took up position at a corner, rifle ready. Kaidan quickly synced his omni-tool with the team network, receiving the chief's suspicious signal wavelength and setting his tool to scan for the same one. Answering pulses came from Wickham and Garrus' tools.

"Damn crates are giving me scatter, stand by," Kaidan said, carefully making his way towards another open row as he watched his tool display sweep back and forth.

He jumped when Nayar's assault rifle went off by his ear. The corporal shouldered him aside and kept firing towards the gap at the end of the stack, where the spindly shapes of drones flashed past, searching for a firing angle.

Precious seconds dragged by as the three scans searched the room. Between the bounce from the profusion of metal in the warehouse and Garrus' close proximity to Wickham, the tool's calculation seemed to wander a great deal before finally settling on a location within the warehouse.

"Got it!" Kaidan announced, quickly marking the position to the team's map.

There was an uncomfortably long pause, then Shepard's voice came back over the comms. "We're pinned down!"

"We'll find it, Commander!" Kaidan said. He reached out and pulled Nayar back into the stack and around a corner.

The two of them maneuvered back through the maze, dodging past openings as the searching eyes of the drones followed them, spraying gunfire whenever the two marines were spotted. They got as close as they could to the location in Kaidan's HUD, but there was a large open space between them and their target. He primed an ECM grenade and then handed it to Nayar, who nodded and slid it into the launch rail on his rifle.

"Now for the fun part," Kaidan said absently as he executed his biotic barrier mnemonic. "Run out into the open and hope there's a dead zone out there."

"Break a leg, sir," Nayar said, then jumped out and fired the ECM grenade into a mass of drones.

Kaidan waited a heartbeat for the crackling explosion, then took a deep breath and broke out of cover, sprinting for where he prayed the control console for the drones was sitting. The drones were hardwired to exclude a so-called 'dead zone' around their console, a safety protocol that ensured no amount of software tampering could induce them to attack their operator.

His shields and biotic barrier shuddered with impacts and he stumbled, arms flailing. He managed to tuck himself into a roll before pushing himself back up on one knee, looking around wildly. To his relief, the drones chasing him suddenly pulled up in their trajectory and milled around uncertainly.

Kaidan pulled out his pistol. "Nayar, get over here!" he yelled and started firing on the drones. They reacted en masse, splitting and flowing away like a school of startled fish.

The corporal appeared and ran toward him, trying to dodge the hail of gunfire from the pursuing drones. Kaidan turned to provide covering fire, enough, he hoped, to foul up the drone's aim. It was almost enough- just as he got close, Nayar staggered as a spray of blood erupted from his left shoulder.

Kaidan lunged forward and caught the corporal, dragging him backwards into the dead zone as he continued to fire his pistol.

"I'm f-fine," Nayar panted, holding his arm. "Just shut 'em down!" Drops of blood pattered onto the dirty floor.

"Status, Lieutenant?" Shepard asked urgently.

"Stand by!" Kaidan answered, easing the corporal aside.

He cast about and quickly found what he was looking for set back against a metal crate along the wall. The control console was a familiar make, a standard - if somewhat out of date - Alliance Military assault drone command node. Set into a sturdy metal frame, the rugged holo-terminal sprouted a pair of thick broadcast antennae.

Kaidan called up the control display, but growled in frustration when it flashed red.

"It's here but I'm locked out, Commander!" he said into the comms. "It's going to take a minute!"

Unlike a physical lock, omni-gel was little help in this situation. If the node was destroyed, the drones would continue to execute their last orders, which evidently involved killing anything that moved within the warehouse. He opened his omni tool and punched up the control node's I/O port, then selected a couple of his favorite brute-force hacking algorithms, ones that tended to work well on Alliance firewalls.

He was never formally taught how to break into military computer systems, but any tech worth his salt picked it up on the side. Staying abreast of the latest techniques was nearly a full-time job in itself, as hackers were engaged in a constant game of one-ups-manship with the people trying to keep them out. Kaidan had to straddle the line between the two camps, and every time he let himself feel like he was getting good, inevitably some kid would go and build a better mouse.

It was hard to ignore the drones still buzzing around, close at hand, while Nayar took pot-shots at them. Kaidan shifted from foot to foot in impatience as he punched commands into his tool, trying to find the crack in the wall.

It was so abrupt he barely had time to open his mouth in alarm. Smooth and soundless, suddenly the floor under him was simply not there anymore, and he was falling. He made a startled grab for the edge as it whipped past, but missed. He heard a thud and an instant later the air was punched out of his lungs as he landed hard on something, then slid down a smooth angled surface.

There was a grunt of pain, a tangle of voices, and then something cracked across his helmet with vicious strength, and the world spun away into darkness.

* * *

Consciousness came back suddenly, a wash of sensation and sound. Kaidan's shoulders ached from being bent back, supporting his body weight hanging loose from whatever was holding him at the elbows. Face down, he heard the dull scrape of his knees dragging along a smooth floor, the unsteady gait of whoever was pulling him. A weird, antiseptic smell hung in the air, flavored with the ozone of intersecting kinetic shields. Someone was talking.

"This is nuts." The voice sounded agitated. "Can we please just kill them? They're going to slow us down. At least the one pissing blood?"

"They're _leverage_," the second voice growled, thick and low but authoritarian. "In case we run into any opposition."

A slow pulse of pain throbbed through Kaidan's skull. He cracked his eyes open and looked to the sides, careful not to move his head. The weight of his helmet dragged uncomfortably on his neck. Out of the corners of his eyes, he could see a set of legs on either side of him, armored in dun gray. One set might have been human, but the other bore the thick toes of a turian. He didn't dare look up to where the voices were for fear of giving himself away.

His HUD was no help. His armor systems seemed to be normal, but the only team signal he was getting was from Nayar, and even that was intermittent, otherwise it seemed he was completely off the team network. Whoever his captors were, they were probably carrying a short-range signal disruptor.

"That bitch won't find her way down _here,_" the first voice said, high with false bravado.

"Maybe if you made less of a habit of underestimating people, we wouldn't have a _Spectre_ breathing down our necks to begin with," the low voice said, thick with warning. Kaidan's heart sank when recognized the clipped accent, the same as Balak's.

He risked turning his head slightly right and caught the silhouette of a pistol racked on the hip of one of his captors. _His_ pistol. Fear pushed hard against him, the sick feeling that every inch of distance they traveled was taking him further away from any possible help. The memory of the slaves on the batarian ship made his stomach coil.

"Spectres aren't supposed to operate on the Citadel," the first voice snapped defensively. "We've had no problems whatsoever for-"

"Don't make excuses, you miserable _th'gras_," the batarian spat venomously. "Someone got careless, probably one of _you_."

There was a long moan, and a voice murmured something from behind Kaidan, too low for him to hear. Whoever was dragging him along stopped.

"Hmm, perhaps we _should_ just kill the-"

Kaidan moved all at once, pulling up one leg to get a foot planted, then using the purchase to lunge sideways. He wrenched his left arm free and made a grab for the gun. It came away easily in his grip, but whoever was holding him on his right side pulled hard and Kaidan stumbled and sprawled on the ground.

Adrenaline roaring in his ears, he twisted on the ground and threw out a hand at the figures looming over him. Dark energy boiled through the air and slammed into them, but the throw was dishearteningly weak. Laid out on the ground, he couldn't get into a proper stance, nor marshal the kind of concentration needed to execute a hard strike.

"Agh, fucking freak!" a voice yelled.

An impact shocked through his ribs, and a face swarmed into view. Kaidan had the brief impression of human eyes looking down at him with a twisted grimace of hate. He pointed his gun at the face and fired, and was rewarded with a scream of pain.

His left arm was grabbed, and something cracked hard across his helmet, making his vision explode into sparks. With his free hand he fired blindly, wildly as fast as the pistol could pump out the rounds. The shouting of those around him was suddenly drowned out by a roar that painted the walls in dancing orange light and cast his captors in stark black silhouettes.

A blunt weight thudded into his left shoulder, followed by little needles of pain as something sharp punched through a joint in his armor's undersuit. An explosion of bright agony bloomed from the spot, wracking his muscles with violent convulsions. He wanted to scream but couldn't force anything past his clenched jaw as he felt himself thrash spasmodically. Heat washed against his face as he struggled to draw breath.

The pain stopped abruptly as the pressure on his shoulder vanished. A figure loomed above him, and the dying flickers of the explosion danced in four black eyes. A twisted smirk of disgust crossed the alien's face as he glanced around, then reversed his grip on the long metal rod in his hands and almost negligently clubbed Kaidan across the right forearm. His hand opened reflexively and the pistol flipped out of his grip and skipped away.

The batarian swung the rod again and backhanded Kaidan across the jaw. His sturdy helmet took the brunt of it, but his head still snapped around hard and the world spun madly. Once again came the bite of the needle-sharp electrodes in his back, and heard the whine of charge buildup before agony exploded across his body.

After what seemed eternity, the pain relented. Something slammed his head into the floor, grinding against his helmet and pinning him in place. In his swimming vision, he could see the form of a heavy armored boot planted next to him.

"He shot me in the _face_!" a voice moaned, making a sick bubbling sound.

Gasping for air, Kaidan tried to push against the weight holding him down, but his arms flopped uselessly, refusing to obey him. All over his body, his muscles continued to convulse fitfully. Panic clawed up his throat. This was not the clean, honorable death Virmire had once promised.

"And you're prettier for it," the batarian voice declared. "That's the problem with these military types, they don't know when to lie down." Something metal tapped against Kaidan's helmet.

There was a spasm of wet coughing. "Let me kill him, fucking biotic freak!"

"No!" the batarian voice roared, and Kaidan felt the shock of fury through the foot pinning him down. "Do you think I'm going to go crawling back to the Circle with nothing but apologies for the loss of millions in investment capital? Now obey your better before I finish what this one started!"

Something thudded against the back of Kaidan's neck.

_No_

He distinctly heard the snap as the thin electrodes punched through the flexible armored collar.

_Help_

The buildup whine, felt as much as heard, running up his spine into his skull.

_Help me K-_

Pain was everything, everywhere, an endless stark horizon reaching into infinity.


	8. Endure

Garrus wasn't watching his HUD when Alenko and Nayar's team connections went dead. He was firing his rifle at the drones, trying to make himself concentrate on one target at a time. The automatons didn't make it easy, sliding and swerving unexpectedly, melting into the swarm when their shields failed. He'd never seen so many in one place. The high ceilings and open alleys of the warehouse gave them plenty of room to maneuver, and he, Shepard and Wickham had wedged themselves into the meager cover afforded by an assortment of oddly-shaped crates and an automated industrial forklift parked near the back wall.

He realized something was wrong when Shepard's voice cut through the comms, calling their names, and nothing came back. Garrus finally looked at his HUD and saw they were both completely off the team channel.

"Lieutenant, Corporal, respond!" Shepard tried a second time, her voice rising with urgency.

The commander made to dodge past Garrus but quickly retreated, shouldering into the turian as a withering hail of the drones' gunfire deformed the skin of a metal crate.

"Godammit, Kaidan, answer me," she breathed between her teeth. The cowling of her shotgun creaked under her grip.

Garrus' heart writhed with sympathy and sudden worry in an echo of the commander's obvious distress. He tried resetting the team connections, but his comm system's search came up empty.

Some fifty feet away, the maintenance entrance finally burst open and Venrik's C-Sec squads stormed in. Garrus was glad for the support of the older tetrarch, a solid soldier seemingly devoid of ambition, the kind of turian who exemplified Palavan's hierarchical tradition. In past years, Garrus had resented Venrik's strict adhesion to rules, but his reliability was beyond reproach. It stood in strange contrast to his occasionally problematic love of gambling, but it seemed Venrik saved all of his risk-taking for quasar machines.

Mercifully, the tetrarch's squads were well-prepared for what awaited them inside the warehouse, and they led with a hail of charged ECM grenades. Confusion erupted among the swarm as the drones tried to compensate for the new invasion.

Shepard, for her part, didn't hesitate to take advantage of the change in the battle's momentum. She pushed past Garrus and tore away toward the far end of the room, heedless of the gunfire impacts across her shields.

The turian's breath hissed between his teeth and he tried to force his scattered thoughts back together as a barrage of bullets continued to spark and chatter around him. He remembered the loading docks at the far end of the warehouse, the only other exit he'd noticed.

"Tetrarch!" he said, "Get a squad to the rear doors and secure them! We've lost contact with two of our team members!"

"Understood, Praetor!" Venrik answered crisply.

"Come on, Chief," Garrus shouted to Wickham over the din, "We can get to the control console!"

Wickham nodded and fired an ECM grenade at the disorganized drones, and the two of them broke from cover and ran after Shepard. Some of the drones took off in pursuit, and Garrus and Wickham had to dodge between stacks and rows to avoid their fire. Garrus' lungs were burning when they finally rounded a corner and sprinted the last twenty feet to where Shepard stood.

The commander herded the two of them into the drones' dead zone. "Shut them down!" she barked harshly.

Wickham skidded to a stop in front of the console and began entering commands into her omni-tool. Garrus looked around in confusion. His HUD clearly showed this was Nayar and Alenko's last recorded location, but there was no evidence of either of them save for smeared boot-prints in the blood spattered on the dark floor.

"Loading doors secure," Venrik reported over the comms. "I've seen no other possible exits, Praetor."

Garrus acknowledged the tetrarch as he continued to look for any possible clues. He knew Nayar had been hit, and it didn't seem like there would have been time to attend to the wound. Logically, there should have been more blood spatter leading away from where they had disappeared.

A long minute and then another dragged past as Shepard continued to fire on the drones, occasionally calling into her comms, or just yelling incoherent insults at the unfeeling automatons.

It was with stark suddenness that the drones stopped in mid air, as one, and their gun mounts retracted into their housings. The abrupt silence echoed hollowly. Shepard dropped the heat-shimmering muzzle of her shotgun and jogged a few steps away, examining the floor for signs as Garrus had.

"Venrik," Garrus said, "keep a guard on those loading doors and sweep that end of the warehouse. We have no sign of Lieutenant Alenko or Corporal Nayar at their last known location."

"Yes, Praetor. I've summoned an aerial to scout the exterior street."

"Good," Garrus responded. The automated aerial drones could be deployed quickly from any C-Sec garrison, and their speed and high-resolution optics were excellent for securing intel on street activity.

The turian was trying to decide the next course of action when he suddenly felt something through his feet, a subtle burst of vibration. His first impulse was to dismiss it, but when he glanced at the humans, Shepard and Wickham had frozen and were looking around.

"What was that?" the commander asked, striding back toward the chief. "Did you feel it?"

"Yes Ma'am," Wickham said. She crouched down and laid her palm on the floor, omni-tool lit. "I'd swear it came from below us."

"That's not possible," Garrus said with a shake of his head. "There's nothing below us, this floor is the base of Ward, the Citadel itself."

Wickham looked skeptical as she continued to stare at the ground, moving her omni-tool around.

"They can't have gone far," Garrus continued, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

Shepard stalked toward him, teeth set with barely repressed fury. "They didn't vanish into _thin air_, Garrus!" she grated, her voice rising.

Garrus swallowed hard. "I know, Commander, we-"

There was a yelp of surprise and Garrus turned sharply back to see the chief vanish from sight. The turian watched in open-mouthed astonishment as Shepard reversed course and peered down into the impossible rectangular portal that had opened up in the floor. Without hesitation, she pulled her shotgun off her back and hopped down into it.

A burst of gunfire rattled noisily from within. Forcing his stunned body into motion, Garrus lurched forward to the perfectly straight edge of the hole, pulling his rifle off his back. The floor dropped away to a smooth, angled plane some eight feet below. Fighting the sense of wrongness of the situation, Garrus quickly let himself down and landed on the smooth floor, then immediately slid sideways.

He braced himself on the wall to avoid falling over as he skidded to a stop next to Shepard and the recumbent form of Chief Wickham. The floor leveled out into a featureless, perfectly square hallway perhaps seven feet wide. Right next to them, what was left of an automated turret sputtered fitfully.

The chief clambered to her feet, eyes round with surprise. "Look, there's blood and... ew, what's _this_ gunk?" She held up her hand.

A flash of recognition ran through Garrus as he saw the grey-green residue sticking to the armor. It was what had been scattered all over the station after Saren's attack; the dissolved remains of Keepers.

"Chief, what did you do?" Shepard asked, shining her light around the dim corridor.

"I don't know!" the chief spluttered. "I picked up this faint signal, an open port, so I pinged it and the floor just... went away!"

"We... shouldn't be here," Garrus said reflexively, staring at the smoking gun turret. It was wired into a small terminal and a back-up generator; loose cables snaked away down the hall along dusty footprints and crimson spatters of human blood. Another cable ran up the wall toward the opening above them.

"Well, then they shouldn't either!" Shepard snapped. "Come on, let's move!" She turned off her lamp and jogged away.

Garrus glanced up to the open space above him. "Venrik!" he said into his comms. "Call for additional squads to secure this warehouse, and converge on this position, we've found an entrance!" He hurried after Shepard and Wickham.

"Praetor..."

"Do it!" Garrus barked, trying to cut through the uncharacteristic hesitation that bled into the stolid tetrarch's voice.

Garrus couldn't help but feel profoundly troubled himself. All his life, the Citadel had been the shining symbol of galactic civilization, a stable core as inviolate as the mysterious, ultra-hard metal that made it up. One didn't question the Citadel itself, nor its Keepers, as one didn't question the rock that made up a planet- it simply _was._

Saren had been the first to so deeply profane the spirit of the Citadel, and the revelations he and the Reaper Sovereign brought shook that foundation to the core. Garrus could never have articulated what the symbol of the Citadel meant to him until it seemed to betray him.

But the turrets set up near the entrance to gun down Keepers, the cables and lights burrowing through the skin of the station, were not the work of some million-year-old god-machine, they were the work of mortals like Garrus, those not blinded by the immovable traditions of the Council. And now it took humans, upstart newcomers in most people's opinions, to shine the light into the depths of the Council's refusal to look any further than their own beliefs about their mastery of the galaxy.

Garrus followed the humans as the hallway veered abruptly, then opened up into a vast space with an arched roof. Great flanges of dark metal bisected the walls, running down into deep recessed gaps in the floor. Arcs of coruscating blue-white electricity lashed the air between the exposed ends of massive electrodes, filling the walls with strobing shadows.

"I, uh... I guess even the Citadel has to dump charge," Wickham ventured over the buzz and crackle.

Garrus couldn't find his voice, awestruck by the display of the Citadel's mysterious inner workings. Shepard cautiously approached the arcing bolts.

"They got across," Shepard said, pointing. Down on the floor, along one of the beams that crossed under the electrical discharge, the flashing light highlighted smears of red.

"Somehow I don't think this has an off switch..." the chief said, voice trailing off doubtfully.

The commander didn't answer, abruptly striding forward. Garrus' heart jumped into his throat when one of the massive bolts leapt off the wall and enveloped Shepard. She flinched, but remained standing as the charge continued to connect to both sides of the room as it played across her armor.

"We aren't grounded," Garrus realized aloud. "I don't think... the Citadel itself is conductive."

"Don't think _I_ would've wanted to be the first to test that theory..." Wickham muttered.

Shepard turned and beckoned them forward before turning and carefully walking across the narrow beam. Garrus stepped up onto it, instinctively bracing himself. But there was no impact, just his HUD skewing and distorting as the powerful energy fields toyed with his armor systems.

As he approached the far side, he looked down. Between the broad beams, deep down through the shafts in the floor, he glimpsed the purple swirl of the Serpent Nebula. He swallowed and focused on the solid ground, hurrying to join Shepard on the far side. Trying to shake off the disquiet, he quickly tapped out a message to Venrik instructing the tetrarch how to cross the electrical discharges.

Once regrouped, Shepard led them quickly through an opening and into a tunnel that branched seemingly at random. Passages both large and far too small for any person fed off into darkness, following some unfathomable pattern. Shepard used her helmet lamp to follow dirty footprints, cables and the occasional spot of blood.

The dark corridor twisted and turned before spilling into a wide room illuminated by yellowish utility lamps. Medium-sized boxes had probably once been stacked neatly, but were now scattered haphazardly across the floor, scorched black along their sides. The twisted shell of a chemical drum lay at the center of the blast.

Shepard scuffed the blasted floor with a boot. "We're losing the trail," she said.

Garrus looked around, noticing four doors leading away. "We could split up," he suggested.

"I don't... want to lose anyone else," Shepard said in a taut voice.

"It's the fastest way, Commander," Wickham pointed out. "Otherwise we're guessing."

Shepard closed her eyes briefly, brows knotted together. "All right," she said finally, "you two go that way, but stay together, and don't engage anyone if you can avoid it." She turned and jogged away through one of the room's exits.

Garrus pulled his assault rifle off his back and led the way through another, advancing quickly but as quietly as he could manage. Frustration gnawed at him as they wove through more narrow, meandering corridors. Finally, the main corridor split in two. The loose cables on the floor trailed away to the left, and Garrus elected to follow the only familiar signs.

After two more bends, light spilled into the hall. More utility lamps illuminated a room beyond crammed floor to ceiling with small boxes. The ceiling itself was deeply recessed with wide grooves, creating beams that hung down low enough to force Garrus to duck his head.

"This place doesn't make any sense," Wickham muttered, edging into the room and trying to see around the stacks.

"It wasn't made for us..." Garrus replied absently.

On impulse, he planted his foot on one of the small boxes and shoved it sideways. It upended onto the floor, the flimsy card splitting at the seams. He was not remotely surprised to see the small, single-dose inhalers that spilled out.

"Is that red sand?" the chief asked.

"It would be my first guess," Garrus said, turning away. "This is a dead end, come on."

They hurried back to the intersection, and had started down the second fork when Shepard's voice came over the comms in a harsh whisper. "I think I see them. Get over here!"

"On our way," Garrus answered quietly, reversing course. A rush of nervousness flashed through him.

"Damn," Wickham growled, "they better be all right."

Garrus didn't answer, dread crawling up his back as they jogged back toward the scorched storage room. If Alenko and Nayar were still alive, it probably meant a hostage situation, in a totally alien environment.

They broke through to the room at a dead run, weaving through the scattered boxes and crates and heading for the door Shepard had taken.

They were barely a dozen feet down the hall when Shepard spoke again, breathless. "Oh god, they've got..."

"We're coming, Commander!" Wickham said.

"Stop!" Shepard yelled, a distorted crack of imperative over the comms. "Stay there! Stay there or they'll be killed!"

Garrus rocked to a halt, flinching at the sharp edge of panic in her voice. Beside him, Wickham swore acidly.

After a few seconds of tense silence, an idea abruptly popped into Garrus' head. His first impulse was to dismiss it outright, but the desire to do _something_ was too strong.

He pulled out an ECM grenade and lit his omni-tool interface. He scrolled quickly through the programs he had stored on it, finding one he had written himself during the _Normandy_'s long FTL flights. He'd never field-tested it, but necessity called on it's use. He executed the program, and the grenade began to charge in his grip as his armor fed power from its own stores.

Garrus paged Venrik. "Tetrach," he said quietly, "I'm going off-comms briefly. You and your squads are ordered to remain clear of this area until I or Spectre Shepard contact you."

"Yes, Praetor," Venrik answered. His signal warbled with interference.

Garrus reached up with his free hand and cycled the neck seal of his helmet open, then pulled it off. He laid it on the buttress next to him and then quickly unclipped his guns. His tool beeped softly- the grenade was charged and ready. He touched the program start icon on his tool.

A quick burst of code spread down his eyepiece as the program now nested in the grenade synced up to his armor. With the perfect timing he had so patiently coded, his armor systems powered down just as the grenade powered up, spoofing his transponder signal and putting out an energy signature mimicking a kinetic shield. Unless someone was watching very carefully, the rollover would be virtually seamless.

"What... What are you doing?" Wickham asked nervously.

Garrus laid the grenade next to his helmet. He looked the chief in the eye. "I'm staying here," he said evenly, scooping up his sniper rifle.

Garrus turned and jogged down the corridor. Without his network map, he had to rely on memory and direction sense, though the faceless corridors of the Citadel's underworld were little help in that regard. His armor dragged on his limbs, deprived of the power-assist that usually compensated for its weight.

Thick bundles of cables ran along the ground, an obvious trail left by the intruders as they tried to link their equipment. There was a certain cunning in the choice to eschew any kind of wireless signal, thus avoiding the possibility of leakage and interception. But Garrus was beginning to suspect practicality as well- the Citadel's dark metal seemed to deaden communications.

The garbled echo of loud voices bounced down the corridor. Suddenly an alcove opened to his left and Garrus noticed a metal ladder leading upwards into an opening in the ceiling. The majority of the cables split off and trailed up into the dim, narrow shaft. A pale light was visible at the top.

"Burn as a clear flame...," Garrus muttered to himself as he gripped the ladder and began climbing as quickly as he could manage with his bulky rifle.

Garrus crested the top of the ladder and quickly hopped up to the landing, a small chamber leading to a hallway. The cables snaked along the wall toward an opening that spilled ruddy artificial light. He hurried through it.

Another room in the nonsensical maze that was the Citadel's skin opened before him, deeper than it was wide. The wall to his right seemed to open onto a larger space through window-like gaps. In front of those windows were set up several banks of computer equipment, fed by cables that led off in various directions.

In the center of the room, peering at an amber holo-display, was a batarian in dark red armor. The helmetless alien turned and started to speak, as if expecting someone else, but froze when he saw the turian.

Garrus lunged. His thick outstretched talons punched the batarian in the throat, and though they were too blunt to puncture the armored collar, the force of the blow crushed the alien's shout of alarm into a strangled gurgle. With the weight of his armor carrying Garrus forward, he barreled into the batarian and the two went down in a heap.

The turian tried to force his forearm against the batarian's throat as his opponent squirmed and slammed his fist into Garrus' face, cracking his mandible hard into his teeth. Garrus brought his knee up sharply into the batarian's gut, but the alien's armor stiffened against the blow.

The batarian's teeth were bared and his labored, choked breathing washed against Garrus' face as the two of them grappled and strained to get the upper hand. The batarian swung at Garrus again, and this time the glint of metal warned the turian in time to get his forearm in the way of the carbon-steel combat knife that suddenly flashed in the orange light.

Garrus barely twisted out of the way of another stab aimed at his face and locked his hands around the batarian's grip. He wrapped a leg around the batarian for leverage and doggedly began twisting the knife around. With his free hand the alien tried to stop the inexorable reversal of his own blade, then swung again at Garrus' face.

The turian gritted his teeth and took the increasingly frantic blows, ducking his head and redoubling the pressure. Unable to breathe properly, his opponent's strength was flagging. Implacably, Garrus forced the point of the knife into one of the batarian's eyes. The alien convulsed and gave a strangled scream, and as his strength failed Garrus leaned in and used his weight to punch the knife through the alien's skull and into his brain.

The batarian bucked once, limbs thrashing, then went limp. Garrus rolled to his feet, panting, and cast about for his discarded sniper rifle. His head and arms throbbed, and he could feel hot blood seeping along the ridges of his face. He scooped up his rifle and crossed to the wide windows, catching the faint echo of what might have been distant voices.

The window edges were deep, and Garrus was able to hop up and slide on his knees to the edge. He overlooked a wide, cavernous space whose bottom opened straight into the swirling mass of the Serpent nebula. Across the roof, near Garrus' perch, thick bracing struts arced clear across to the other side. From them was supported a jury-rigged hangar bay, complete with docking clamps, a charge dissipater array and two loading gantries that snaked up alongside the ship docked there. The cold fury that curdled in his chest only redoubled at the sight of the small, clearly turian cargo freighter.

Down on the gantry to the right of the ship, Garrus thought he could see movement, but his vision was partially obscured by the blocky bulk of the freighter. With a deep breath, he swallowed the nervous fear gnawing on the edges of his mind and shimmied out along one of the support beams, dropping to a crawl as the space over his head diminished with the arcing roof.

Garrus forced himself to breathe evenly to try and still the adrenal trembling running through his body as he deployed his sniper rifle and looked through the sight, the scene below snapping into close focus. He could see Shepard standing at the bottom of the gantry, weaponless, but poised with repressed energy.

He swept the view up the gantry where several figures stood near the hatch to the ship. He immediately recognized the black and red of Alenko's armor as the lieutenant hung limp between two people, one a batarian and the other, to his shock, a turian. The batarian held a pistol to Alenko's head as he yelled down to Shepard.

Behind the batarian stood two armed and armored humans pointing their guns down toward the commander. One had his free hand clamped to the side of his face, and the front of his chest was splashed with gory streaks of red. On the gantry floor between them, a third human whom Garrus guessed must be Nayar lay in an unmoving heap.

From his high perch, Garrus couldn't make out what the batarian was saying, but he could guess. A bargain, no doubt, some new and terrible burden to weigh on Shepard and the spirit of the _Normandy_.

Blood oozed down his face as his mind raced. He'd made a choice and disobeyed an order, and was now committed. But in his haste he was stuck not knowing all of the variables- he didn't know if his interference would help or doom his friends.

The opportunity came mid-thought as the batarian's vehement, imperious speech caused his hand to move the pistol fractionally away from Alenko's head.

Garrus squeezed the trigger.

The rifle bucked in his grip and a gout of black blood exploded out the far side of the batarian's skull. Garrus waited the half-second necessary to confirm that his target was well and truly dead, then swung his gun around and picked the next dangerous targets, the armed humans. They were already moving, forcing Garrus to aim high in order to avoid hitting Nayar, but he clipped the shoulder of the unwounded one. As the man staggered under the blow, Garrus tightened his aim and fired again, hitting him in the torso.

He could feel the burst of heat venting out of his rifle's sinks and he gritted his teeth and forced himself to wait a heartbeat. Down on the gantry, the wounded man was firing at Shepard when suddenly the air distorted around him and he flew backwards, slamming into the gantry's thin railing and flipping over it. Garrus heard his high, thin wail die suddenly as he tumbled down and out into the nebula beyond.

He watched as Shepard ran up the gantry and scooped up one of the discarded rifles, then turned and started firing toward the hatch of the freighter, which faced away from Garrus' position.

Garrus swung his rifle sight back down the gantry to where Alenko lay next to the dead batarian. The turian that had been standing at the batarian's side was still there, rocking back and forth on his feet, hands spread, as if confused. Garrus watched in dawning horror as the turian's mandibles flared as wide they could go and his head snapped back. A distant howl of pain echoed hollowly through the docking bay.

Shepard came into his field of view, rifle pointed at the turian as she tracked him. Blue blood began to flow freely from the unfortunate turian's nose as he convulsed and screamed, hands clamped to his head.

Garrus could see the muzzle of Shepard's rifle trembling. In a moment of agonized decision, he snapped his aim back to the writhing turian and fired one shot cleanly through his forehead. As the turian fell dead, Garrus caught the flash of metal- the slave jack in the back of his skull.

On his high perch, Garrus pulled his rifle to him and dropped his forehead onto it, shuddering. Dissipating heat from the gun washed across his face, eddying in the cold air.

_Brother... I'm sorry._

Garrus powered on his armor as he crawled back toward the windows to the makeshift control tower. The suit began hardening around him as it cycled through its startup checks, and his comms came back online.

"Tetrarch!" he said, steadying his voice. "I need a medical team to Spectre Shepard's position, quickly!"

"Yes Praetor," Venrik answered immediately.

"What's your status?"

"Additional squads from second branch are securing the warehouse, Praetor. We're in the process of searching the tunnels, there is scattered resistance but we've secured at least five prisoners and... a great deal of contraband."

"Good," Garrus said as he scanned the terminals in the room, ignoring the dead batarian cooling on the floor. "Secure the tunnels and get a forensics team down here."

"Praetor, should we not lock these tunnels down?" Venrik said. "It's highly... unusual, the Executor-"

"Executor Pallin will learn of it soon enough," Garrus said bluntly.

He sympathized with Venrik's hesitation, but the taboo against questioning the Keepers and the Citadel itself had to fall. Especially if all it took were well-placed automated turrets to circumvent the station's sanctity.

"Venrik... we endure," Garrus said.

There was a pause, then the tetrarch answered. "The spirit endures."

As Garrus had hoped it would, the traditional words seemed to steel the older turian. Satisfied that there was no one left to disengage the docking clamps on the freighter and allow it to escape, Garrus headed for the ladder and clambered down to the lower level. He made his way toward Shepard, striding through a long hallway with several branching corridors that finally emerged into the bay.

Garrus stopped at the bottom of the sloped gantry. He was relieved to see Alenko sitting back against the railing, apparently conscious, with Shepard crouched beside him. A little further up, two C-Sec agents were attending to Nayar with the chief hovering beside them.

The sprawled bodies of the pirates trailed blood down the gantry. Garrus forced himself to look at the dead turian, conscious that his actions had probably cost the slave his life even before he'd ended his suffering with a single shot. He hadn't been able to prevent someone from activating a kill-switch.

He stepped aside as the C-Sec agents carrying the stretcher with Nayar hurried past him, Wickham on their heels. He watched them vanish into the dark tunnels, then turned back to see Shepard walking toward him.

"Garrus, you..." she started, then trailed off, mouth set in a hard line.

Garrus squared his shoulders. He'd made the decision when he'd pulled the trigger, and even before that, when he'd taken out the ECM grenade.

"Commander, I take full responsibility for this operation and my actions as Citadel Security Praetor. C-Sec will secure all prisoners and evidence and report to the Council on this. The depth of your involvement remains at your discretion, but on behalf of C-Sec I extend our thanks for your invaluable help."

Shepard peered at him from under the rim of her helmet. Garrus returned her gaze, tired, somewhat nervous, but resolute. Formality made things clear, but in his experience, some people could mistake almost anything for a challenge to their position. He had no desire to undermine the Spectre's authority, so he prayed she would understand his intentions.

Some of tension seemed to go out of her stance. "You're going to have a hard time keeping this quiet," she said finally.

Garrus nodded. "Good. Executor Pallin needs to see clearly what's been hiding under his nose. The Citadel isn't some sacred totem, it's a weapon. And if we don't learn to use it, our enemies _will_.

"And Commander... Shepard, thank you for trusting me."

Shepard shook her head. "You earned it, Garrus," she said wearily. "I don't know if I'd wish the title of Spectre on anyone, but if you take it, I know you'll do a good job. Terra Nova lives because of you."

She rubbed her eyes with thumb and forefinger, shoulders slumped with exhaustion. He knew the last few days had been difficult for her in ways he didn't completely understand, something to do with the unspoken bond she shared with Alenko. It grated on Garrus, but he could offer nothing except silent support and the willingness to take some of her burden.

Garrus placed a hand on her shoulder and gently steered her back toward where the lieutenant sat by the railing. "Go, Commander," he said quietly. "Nayar will be taken care of, and... I will carry this."

_The Normandy endures._


	9. Shock

It was said that when waking up, sound is the first sense to filter through to an unconscious mind. For Kaidan, it had always been something else; gravity.

After so many years, he couldn't really remember a time when he wasn't aware of it; not in the crude manner of most people, as a second-hand report from the liquid-filled passages nested behind their ears, but as the all-encompassing tone that filled up every corner of the world. Something so pervasive and constant he usually forgot about it in the everyday business of living.

Before the implant, the sensation was too quiet and the world too loud for him to take notice. For a while, after the surgery, it made him nauseous as his brain tried to reconcile the new input with the established five senses. But the newcomer wasn't intrusive. It was never confused by the savageries of motion, never overwhelmed by excesses like sight and sound could be, its natural variations instead a slow and elegant waveform.

On better days, Kaidan liked to think he had a backstage pass to the universe, even if he usually felt like an ant trying to experience a skyscraper.

The sense of _shift_ buffeted his mind, tugging him upwards through a haze of darkness. A disturbance in the tone that had since become almost familiar; no buildup, just a front-loaded concussive burst intended for little else but breaking. Kaidan knew how tiring those shock output spikes were, he also knew who did nothing but.

Gunfire, swallowed into an echo-less space, rattled against his brain.

A sound, a dreadful howl swept up from nothing into a layered keening that knifed through the air. The shock forced his eyes to open into a nightmare. Bright lights bore down on him, slashed with dark shapes that swam and doubled over themselves. A figure hung in the light, clawed arms shuddering and flailing, head swept back into horns. Sharp teeth and small, penetratingly bright eyes floated freely against the dark shape.

Sick, sluggish terror boiled in him as his body utterly refused to answer his will to move, get up and get away from the screaming monster, the phantom of his memory that was Vyrnnus raging and dying in one bloated instant.

Kaidan crammed his eyes shut against the ghost as his waking body wracked him with arcs of thick pain. The unholy scream suddenly vanished as if severed by a cut connection. Everything swam in a confused muddle of senses.

Voices. The ground under him shuddered with passing footsteps, the heavy tread of boots on metal. He cracked his eyes open again and saw more phantoms with crested heads and floating, piercing eyes. Something passed, close by, crowding out the figures.

Kaidan bent all his will to it, and finally, sluggishly, his body responded. He squinted and dragged his leaden arm up, extending his fingers and aiming for where there should be something. He felt solidity, reality, and reflexively gripped it.

There was movement as Kaidan was hooked under his shoulders and dragged sideways and up into a sitting position. He set his teeth against sudden vertigo as he felt something against his back. He forced his doubling vision to focus on the form right in front of him, and his heart thudded when his mind finally connected to the familiar camouflage green armor.

He tried to say something, but all that came out was a garbled mess. Shepard... it really _was_ Shepard… crouched very close, touched the side of his helmet. He felt the slightly rough grip texture of her glove as she slid her thumb along the inside of the jaw-guard to touch his cheek and tipped his head back slightly to face her.

"You're safe," she said softly, and for a moment there was no other noise in the world but her voice. "We'll get you to a med-bay, the-"

"No!" he said, forcing the word out. The idea of being dragged away from her, stripped and prodded by a bunch of strangers and aliens was quite possibly the worst thing he could imagine at that moment.

Confusion crossed Shepard's face.

"Just... give me a few minutes," he mumbled. Everything seemed distant, made leaden by a background buzz in his head.

"Kaidan..." she said uncertainly.

He drew a ragged breath. "Please."

Shepard relented and turned away to look down the gangway. Kaidan suddenly realized he was still gripping her forearm when she turned back and gently pried his fingers loose.

"I have to talk to Garrus. Just... sit tight, I'll be back in a minute," she said, holding his hand for a moment longer before standing up and walking away.

Even as the prickle of fear gnawed at him, something in Kaidan's rational brain pushed through the haze and coldly informed him he was being ridiculous. But the maddening buzz didn't stop, nor did rationality dispel the smell of the blood running in rivulets down the metal walkway. A turian face stared vacantly at him, mandibles slack. There was an overlong moment of sickness as he tried to recognize the bare features but finally concluded he didn't.

He twisted around and took hold of the railing he was sitting against, then pulled himself painfully to his feet, using the handhold to bully his recalcitrant limbs into cooperation. The bulk of a small cargo freighter hung before him, but underneath it, the floor dropped away into nothing but the distant swirl of nebula. He stared into the endless abyssal space, and a new wave of vertigo rushed up his spine, making the world tip precariously.

Gripping the railing, Kaidan sank slowly to one knee, resting his head on the railing post. He closed his eyes and concentrated doggedly on the steady gravity all around him, the one sense that didn't seem to be bent on betraying him. He tried to will the buzzing away, but it continued.

A minute passed, then Shepard re-appeared at his elbow. "C'mon, we're done here," she said, crouching down to shoulder under his arm, pulling him to his feet.

The world tilted again, but Shepard's presence seemed to help. Kaidan leaned on her and let himself be steered down the gantry and into the dark hallway beyond, feeling better the minute he had something like solid ground underfoot.

"Nayar... s'he okay?" Kaidan asked, not trying to keep track of the confusing passages they were moving through.

"Yes," Shepard answered. "A C-Sec medic got him stable, they took him to their garrison. Garrus and Wickham are fine."

Kaidan nodded, relieved. He wanted to ask more about what happened, but didn't. He didn't really feel like going back to the confused, jagged memories past the moment when he'd been trying to hack the drone console.

Shapes moved past them in the hallway. He found himself gripping Shepard tighter when they appeared, even as part of him recognized the dark blue armor. Later, he would be properly awed by the disjointed memory of the massive arcs of electricity, but at the time Shepard was coaxing him across, it took every raw nerve he had left to put one foot in front of the other.

By the time they were back up in the warehouse, he was thrilled to be out of the claustrophobic tunnels. He leaned heavily on a random crate and tried to ignore the persistent itch of paranoia toward both the floor and the deactivated assault drones that littered it as Shepard talked to one of the many C-Sec agents hurrying to and fro. The rear cargo doors had been opened, and outside a small fleet of C-Sec vehicles were clustered around the entrance.

Shepard finally walked back over to him. "Is there somewhere... you want to go?" she asked.

Kaidan swallowed. The maddening buzz persisted, crowding coherency out of his thoughts. _Anywhere you are._

Shepard regarded him for a long moment, helmeted head cocked slightly. "You're still in shock," she said quietly. "I'm guessing anywhere away from here is good."

Kaidan nodded slightly. There was an odd relief in her guess- it had been some time since he'd experienced full-blown shock, but it made a sudden kind of sense. But he'd been through it before, and knew it passed.

He stood straight and walked with Shepard, trying to force himself to calm down as they passed by the vehicles and stares of the C-Sec agents. She led him to an unmarked skycar guarded by a turian agent, who nodded to Shepard before walking away. Shepard opened the passenger side of the car and let Kaidan in before climbing in herself.

He leaned back into the seat and closed his eyes, absently flexing his hands as he concentrated on the gravity all around him. He felt the edges of the carefully controlled field that engaged and neutralized the mass of the car, letting it slide easily through the air.

His head throbbed sullenly, in tune with the persistent buzz between his ears. It became increasingly grating as minutes wore on. He lost track of time listening to it compete with the slowly shifting fields of gravity, hoping it would go away.

Some time later the car eased to a stop, and Shepard moved around. Finally, the door beside him opened and she was there, pulling him to his feet. He cracked his eyes open just enough to realize he was on a balcony, then being led inside to a smooth-walled room. He recognized Shepard's apartment with a small start. He'd seen skycars dock at the balconies of the Presidium's apartments before, but only from afar.

Shepard sat him down. On a sudden impulse, Kaidan clumsily stabbed the lock to the neck seal of his helmet and then shoved it off; it made a deadened thud as it landed on the floor. He heard Shepard say something as he clawed at his biotic amp, digging his fingers under the device and pulling it off with a sharp yank.

The plug in the back of Kaidan's skull came free with a crack that ricocheted through his head, bringing a burst of pain and sound. Everything seemed to go blank, but it only lasted a moment. As the world started to refocus, Kaidan heard Shepard saying his name, shaking him. She was beside him, half kneeling on the bed.

"I'm... I'm okay," he said, breathing deeply as the fog receded. "The amp was... feeding back or something. That batarian... had some kind of shock-prod..." The buzz was gone, and everything suddenly seemed clearer.

"He hit you with... Kaidan, why didn't you _tell_ me?" she demanded, giving him another shake. Something at the back of his neck stung fiercely, and he absently reached up to it.

She grabbed his hand and pushed it down. "Don't touch it," she said. "You've got a contact burn from where the amp was sitting." She took a breath, then tapped his forearm lightly. "Power down."

He absently entered the command into his armor and it shut down, loosening around his body in a wave. Shepard pulled off her gloves and retrieved a small medi-gel pack from her storage compartments. He let her tug his collar open and ease his head forward, relishing the feel of her hand against his neck. The cooling analgesic of the medi-gel extinguished the fiery sting of the burn, tightening the skin slightly as it set into a protective layer.

"Anywhere else?" she asked quietly.

He almost said no, preferring not to call up all the details of those desperate seconds, but he could feel the little knives of pain on his back near his left shoulder. He wordlessly reached up and indicated the spot. Shepard quickly unclipped the secondary catches on his torso and eased the armor off. Kaidan flinched when the thin temperature control undersuit peeled off his back, pulling on the raw burns.

"It's not bad," she said reassuringly as she lifted the armor free of his arms and set it aside. "The shock-prods hurt like hell, but they don't cause permanent damage."

Kaidan didn't really need to be enlightened as to why that was. He focused instead on the warm touch and the soothing medi-gel as it banished the pain as if by magic. The choking fear and shock had receded, and he was finally starting to feel like himself again, exhausted but whole. As the immediacy of everything began to fade, the ugly lump of conflict from the past few days remained.

He forced the words out before his tired brain had a chance to get the doubt machine fully engaged. "Shepard, I'm sorry."

He felt Shepard freeze, and her touch disappeared. "For what, being right?" she said bitterly.

The acid in her voice made Kaidan's skin crawl. "I... I don't know that I was," he stammered.

She snorted softly. He turned and looked at her, sitting on the edge of the bed, shoulders hunched. She'd taken her helmet off, and her face was drawn and tired from days of stress.

"I... _hate_ them... I hate them so much," Shepard breathed. In the stillness of the room, he could hear the joints of her armor creak with the rigid tension in her body.

"I try to tell myself that somewhere, there must be normal... normal batarians..." she continued, staring blankly ahead. "But every single one I've ever met has been a murderer... a _slaver_. I couldn't- I just _couldn't_ let Balak get away. 'Just a slave run' one of them said... Just." She growled wordlessly.

"They like to get us young because once the training takes, there's often nothing left but the slave. Some of those people, they might as well be... organic _robots_. You take the jack off and tell them they're free and they just stare at you. They'd starve to death in front of a plate of food because their master wasn't around to tell them to eat.

"That asari... you know how much she must have cost? They're luxury items. All their mental training makes them really hard to break, and you can't breed them forcefully."

A nauseous flutter went through Kaidan's stomach at the implications of that statement.

"Godammit, I don't want to _know_ any of this any more!" she snapped harshly, grating the words out between her teeth. "But I can't make it go away. I can't vote the slavers out of office. I can't demand the Alliance sanction their trade routes or threaten diplomatic repercussions..."

"We fight them," Kaidan ventured warily. "I mean, Torfan-"

"Torfan... hah, what a giant clusterfuck _that_ was," Shepard snarled. "The Alliance gets its hands burned, and it stops even _trying_ for a few years. A bunch of politicians sit around a table and yell at each other about money and diplomatic repercussions. Meanwhile, slave prices go up, the slavers lick their wounds and come up with better ways to control their merchandise. They experiment with breeding us like _cows._

"We learned about the jacks the hard way, the Ns. The Attican Beta assault was supposed to be the new wave of joint-operations anti-piracy action, and lucky me, I was chosen for the infiltration team. We powered down a prison mainframe, and while we're all busy high-fiving each other like idiots, the signal rollover happens... and there's no callback from the central computer..." Her hands balled into fists, bunching up the bedsheets.

Kaidan swallowed hard.

Her voice dropped to a weary rasp. "And you know what they decide? They decide the problem is too big and spread out. The Citadel won't touch the Terminus Systems with a ten-foot pole, so the Alliance just decides to keep the worst news under wraps and write the rest off to the dangers of the new frontier. So here we are, the full might of the Systems Alliance Military... perpetually arriving a little too late."

Kaidan chewed his lip, trying in vain to process it all. "Well, it's true, we just don't have the resources to-"

Shepard stood up suddenly, a grimace flickering across her face. "Look, never mind," she said, her voice thick. "Just... get some rest." She walked to the door.

Kaidan fought to find something, anything, to say.

She stopped, one hand on the door frame. "I will never... Ever! Give a single _inch_ to a slaver," she said without turning around. "Because in that inch they will _destroy_ a thousand lives." With that, she stepped through and the door hissed closed behind her.

Kaidan shuddered in the sudden stillness, hunched over and ran his hands through his sweat-damp hair. _Just have to go and keep pushing the button, don't you? Good job._

At heart, Kaidan was a problem solver, someone who thrived on the satisfaction of conquering tough challenges. But something in him unconsciously recoiled from questions that had no answers, and often his mind would go on stubbornly searching for a solution long after the problem had ceased to be relevant. In a lot of ways, the easiest thing to do, as Garrus had so bluntly pointed out, was leave those quandaries to someone else.

Even after listening to such a heart-wrenching rant, some part of him was still idiotically arguing there was some angle Shepard was missing. He angrily shoved the rest of his armor off and let it slump to the floor.

It burned him to concede that there _was_ no good answer to Balak. The real failure was his; without really realizing it, he'd allowed himself to think he was somehow entitled to question her command, and in one moment of shock, that entitlement had escaped his control. Now he faced the possibility he'd broken something irreparably.

Stripped to his shorts, Kaidan curled up on the bed, dragging the cover over himself as if it would keep the lurking despair at bay.

* * *

Kaidan woke with a start from a confused dream of fire and screaming and the buzzing whine of electrical charge. He lay still for a minute, breathing hard and staring at the bedside table in front of him and the mostly empty water glass and compact medi-gel dispenser, until memory pulled him out of a maze of disorientation.

The room was dim. He'd stripped his omni-tool off with his armor, so couldn't tell what time it was, but it seemed to have slipped into the Presidium's artificial night cycle.

He tried to move and instantly regretted it. Every muscle in his body felt like it had run it's very own marathon and was now stewing in a bath of lactic acid, complaining bitterly with the smallest movement. He groaned quietly as muscles he didn't know he had felt the need to make themselves heard. He could swear it hurt to move his eyelids.

Lying still wasn't going to help. After a minute, Kaidan set his teeth and crawled stiffly out of the bed and stood up. He leaned heavily against the wall for a few moments, rolling his head to try and loosen his neck and back, then finally set about methodically stretching his major muscle groups. In the process, he looked around the room.

It wasn't just that the room was spartan, but there was something empty about it, like a hotel room. A full duffel bag sat on the chest of drawers, as if Shepard were ready to pick up and leave at any moment, even though as far as Kaidan knew, the apartment was hers so long as she served as a Spectre.

The meager light shone off of something round on the far side of the bag, and Kaidan approached it curiously. It turned out to be a hardsuit helmet. He walked over and picked it up. In the dim light he couldn't really see the color, but it was impossible to mistake the shattered visor and the deeply scored brow-plate, the legacy of Sovereign's final attack.

The rest of her mangled Predator armor had since been shipped back to Armax Industries, where the turian engineers were eager to study the effects of catastrophic damage on one of their premium suits. Armax had tripped all over themselves in their haste to provide Shepard with a replacement, knowing the value of having their expensive product publicly worn by the now-famous Spectre.

He wasn't entirely sure why she'd kept the helmet; Shepard did not seem prone to sentimentality. He suspected it was probably more like why she kept her scars- a certain memento mori.

The thought that had dogged him to sleep some hours before came back to him, but in a new light. He was, after all, _here._ Shepard could have dumped him anywhere, sent him to a med-bay or back to the _Normandy_, but in the end she'd brought him to her space. He suddenly realized that even angry and hurt, she must still be trying to bridge the gap, too.

Kaidan put the helmet down and walked stiffly to the doorway. The portal cycled softly open, revealing the dimly-lit living room beyond. Across from where he stood, the only light was a terminal holo-display that glowed amber, full of blocks of text. The chair in front of it was empty. A cold feeling settled across his shoulders as he took a few tentative steps forward, suddenly worried Shepard had left the apartment altogether.

The wide windows to his right opened into the Presidium's artificial night, the various apartments across the ring forming a constellation of perfectly aligned, gently sloping lights. A faint, rhythmic sound in the stillness drew his attention toward where the window met the wall.

He stepped back to the doorway, recognizing the familiar silhouette sitting against the wall, gazing out the window. Knees drawn up, Shepard seemed to be speaking softly into the empty space. The very faint sound abruptly made sense when Kaidan spotted the glint of light off of small earphones.

Shepard continued mouthing along to whatever she was listening to, apparently oblivious to his presence. Kaidan leaned carefully against the door frame, his muscles aching sullenly.

His heart fluttered just looking at her, beautiful in the dim light, her sharp features rim-lit by the artificial starlight. It was hard to think clearly when he really looked at her. Harder still to reconcile that image with that of the warrior who had so mercilessly scythed her way through the batarians, seemingly uncaring of the cost. Or who, deep in those tunnels, in shock, he'd felt so instinctively safe around.

_What do_ _I really know?_

_Because I read a few reports I have even the slightest idea what it's like to lose everything? Because for a while _ _at sixteen I _ _thought my life was over that I know what it's like to have no family, no friends to go back to at all?_

Kaidan looked at the floor as the thoughts raged back and forth in his head. Slavery had always been one of those distant problems that happened to people far away on the fringes of his world. It was the kind of horror that stayed locked away behind a safe wall of text and statistics, the kind of reality one didn't really want to know in a more intimate way.

Now it was shoved up in his face, the dead eyes and metal skull-jacks. There wasn't even a heroic, tearful rescue to feel good about, just the struggle for a life that would always be a shadow of what it should have been. And his new reality was still just a fraction of what Shepard must have seen- this monster had sunk its claws deep into her long before he'd met her.  
_  
What... do I really know?_

_I know she runs her shields hot, I know she raised the kinetic impact tolerances on her medical exoskeleton above normal. I know she uses the older TRCP2 comms protocol for fights because it doesn't have a fraction of a second longer decryption lag. I know she tightened the rails on her pistol even if it heats up faster, because it hits a bit harder. I know she tends to break left attacking through a doorway, and she won't let anyone else go first._

_But I have no idea what she's listening to right now._  
_  
_Kaidan exhaled slowly and forced himself to look at her again. He wondered again what she'd been called to do in those years of special forces services, the experiences she'd touched on very briefly here and there. He tried again to fit the pieces together, the contradictory forces of the compassionate leader and the well-trained killer. These past few days weren't the first time he'd witnessed the evidence of that harder past, only the most stark.

He wondered then who else had stood where he was now, trying to untie the knot. _A smart person would walk the other way before they got burned, or worse. Maybe some already have walked away._

He found himself padding softly across the carpet, skirting the broad couch and sculpted end table as he approached the window. _I guess I'm not very smart.  
_  
Shepard startled from her reverie as he leaned against the wall and let himself slide down, against the vociferous complaints of his thigh muscles.

"Couldn't sleep?" she asked tentatively, pulling the little headphones out of her ears.

"No," he said, rubbing his eyes. "I tried, but some jerk kept trying to come after me with a cattle-prod." He hesitated, unsure of where to even start. "What are you listening to?" he inquired conversationally.

She fiddled with the small headphones. "Nothing exciting, just some old stuff."

Kaidan frowned curiously. "You sound like you're afraid I'm going to make fun of you or something."

She smirked. "I'm not, not really. It's just... well, they're old friends and they've gotten me through a lot of stuff, and I'm not in the mood to be hassled about my eclectic taste in music right now."

"I wasn't planning on hassling you, I was just curious."

Shepard held up the datapad, and Kaidan recognized it as the one he had seen sitting on her bedside table a few times. It was a civilian model, a multi-media storage unit few years old and which had obviously seen the inside of many a travel bag.

"Some of it _is_ pretty bad, I admit," she said with a lopsided smile. "But some of the stuff on here is from back... back before the Mindoir attack. It was one of the few things I got to keep. I've been through a few datapads since then, but I've managed to hold on to the collection through thick and thin and add to it over the years. So it's... I don't know, one of the few things that's really _mine._"

"I get it," Kaidan said reassuringly, suddenly understanding her protectiveness. It was sometimes odd what an individual marine could hold as sacred, but Kaidan had long ago stopped being surprised by the impulse. There was virtually no personal space in barracks or on a packed ship; some soldiers stopped caring, but most carved out their own little abstract corners and defended them fiercely.

"You don't use the comm implants to listen?" he asked. Every soldier was equipped with the tiny speakers nestled just inside the ear canal. Alone, they were inert, but they could be set to receive signals from a soldier's hardsuit or omni-tool communication software. Many civilians opted to receive similar implants for the convenience.

She wrinkled her nose as if he'd suggested attacking a firewall with a pointed stick. "Ugh, no. They're for speech, all midrange. They completely kill the bass, and the hard volume clip sucks donkey balls." She indicated the headphones. "These are okay, they'll do when I can't wake the neighbors. Nothing compares to good surround."

Kaidan tapped a knuckle against the wall behind him. "I hope there's soundproofing here."

Shepard snickered. "No one's threatened me yet, so it must be good. I'll give the asari one thing, they know how to make a sound system."

"D'you dance?" he ventured.

She ran a hand self-consciously through her hair. "Sometimes... I mean, I'm not good at it or anything, it's just to move. I used to sneak off to clubs when I could, with friends or sometimes alone, but it was a great way to just cut loose. There's nothing like the right song at the right time, and at the right volume. Makes everything else go away for a while."

Shepard sighed. "I probably can't really get away with it anymore."

Kaidan recognized the real regret in her voice. "This will blow over, give it time," he offered. "Some vid-star will break a fingernail and you'll be old news."

"I hope so," she said.

"Is... Nayar okay?" he asked after a moment.

Shepard nodded. "He lost a lot of blood, but the wounds aren't serious. He should be back on his feet in a day or two. He's a tough one... He wanted me to recommend him for N training."

"Really?" Kaidan said. "He seemed a little hot-headed to me, like he might have issues with aliens."

Shepard shrugged. "Like we don't know anyone like that? He's certainly not a lost cause, he respected Garrus... The right exposure and leadership would steer him straight. Anyway, a little fire is actually something they look for in special forces."

"I always sort of wondered if I'd qualify for that sort of thing," Kaidan mused.

Shepard was silent for a moment. "Do you really want to know?"

The tone of her voice had a hint of warning in it, but he couldn't resist. "Yeah."

"In my opinion, no," she said bluntly. "You think too much."

Kaidan blinked, stung.

"That isn't a disparagement of your skills, your intelligence or your courage," she said, her tone softening. "You're very good at what you do, but more than that, too. Not many people in this line of work take the time to look at all sides of things... that's a rare thing. But it's not a temperament that's suited to doing the Alliance's dirty work."

He smirked. "So instead I'm doing the Citadel's dirty work?"

"_I_ do the Citadel's dirty work," she said quietly. "_You_ follow orders. And you... keep me honest."

"I'm not some standard you have to live up to!" he snapped, then winced at the shortness. He drew a calming breath to still the childish resentment, then bulled ahead. "I can get all high on my horse, but the truth is I don't know the answers, either. I questioned your command in the field. I was..." _No excuses. _ "I crossed the line. Badly."

"I need an officer, not a doormat," she stated.

Kaidan clenched his jaw, then exhaled. "Fine. But not like that. Not... not hurting you. You didn't deserve that."

Shepard said nothing. In a moment of cold realization, Kaidan began to see he wasn't going to get the tongue-lashing he thought he'd earned, nor was she going to forgive him, because she seemed to have convinced herself she _did_ deserve it. A flicker of cold rage burned in his chest.

He scrunched his toes in the thick carpet, trying to quell the ugly feeling. "I seem to have a well-developed ability to occasionally talk without thinking. It isn't usually good for worse than a laugh at my expense," he said ruefully. "But... I still can't believe I..."

He'd had enough. He wanted to be angry at the entire universe for its cruelty, but absolutely nothing he could do would take away what it had done to the woman sitting beside him, the slaves on the ship, or the countless others. And in the noise of it all, they'd both managed to overlook the fact they'd weeded out a dangerous pirate stronghold on the Citadel itself, and saved a whole colony from obliteration.

He reached over and wrapped his arms around Shepard, then dragged her bodily into his lap. For a moment she seemed utterly startled, and Kaidan though she might pull away.

"I'm so sorry, Kye," he murmured, stubbornly gathering her close to him. "I know you didn't want those engineers to die, and I know you're still beating yourself up about it. And my... little moment of self-important pique didn't do any damn thing to help them, or you. I'm sorry."

She squirmed in his grip and wormed her arms around his torso. "It scared me to death when you dropped out," she said, her voice a husky whisper as she favored him with a hug that made his ribs creak. For everything he'd gone through, he knew firsthand what it was like to be on the other side when that transponder signal went out.

He drew his knees up to further envelop her, greedily absorbing the soothing warmth of her body. Outside the windows, the Presidium's curving night sky drifted lazily past.

It was strange to Kaidan to see a hesitant, almost shy side of Shepard, but also wildly endearing. She was so good at putting on masks that there were times when he wondered how much of what he saw was really her, but it also made those rare moments when she opened up all the more meaningful. More than anything, he would have to be patient.

"I'm not... really very good at this, you know," she murmured at length.

"What?" he asked quizzically.

"This," she answered, indicating the both of them with a finger wag.

Kaidan chuckled. "It's not like they handed out a manual that you missed or something, I think everyone just makes it up as they go along."

"S'bad management," she mumbled, nuzzling his neck. A languid hum of arousal rippled through the lassitude of weariness. "You going to be okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, I think so," Kaidan said, distantly resenting his aching body. "I might need a few days off, though."

"As long as you need. If there's anything I can do, tell me."

He squeezed her. "You're doing it. What about you? When was the last time you got a decent night's sleep?"

She sighed. "I dunno, probably after the party."

"That really isn't saying much," Kaidan said mildly. Sleep had been the last thing on their minds when they'd stumbled back here, and the night had been flirting with dawn by the time they'd gotten around to the business of actual sleep.

There had been a moment, that morning, when he'd drifted awake to find himself alone in the bed. He'd nursed a wounded sense of disappointment for all of ten seconds when the door to the bathroom opened softly, and Shepard had slipped back under the covers and snuggled up to him from behind, sliding an arm around his torso. It was with slightly sheepish but profound happiness that he'd fallen asleep again.

He thought of that moment often.

She started to say something, then trailed off.

"What?" he prompted.

"Can you do something for me?" she asked quietly.

"Of course."

"Figure out something you want to do, you know, for leave, and let me know."

"Like what?"

"I don't care, honestly," she said. "Don't worry about money, just pick something that appeals to you. Tell me when and where and I'll be there, even if I have to break someone's jaw to get them to shut up long enough for me to escape."

Kaidan snickered, because he could picture her carrying out that threat, especially if Ambassador Udina was involved. "I can do that." He shifted his weight, wincing at the stiffening of his muscles.

"Should probably go back to bed before you congeal," she murmured.

"In a minute," he replied. "And only if you come with me."

"... in a minute."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With gratitude to my beta, Lossefalme.


End file.
